


In the Sun's Embrace

by TheThirteenthHour



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon HeartGold SoulSilver Versions
Genre: Ecruteak City, Gen, Ghosts, Nuzlocke Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 22:31:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 31,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4683761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheThirteenthHour/pseuds/TheThirteenthHour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone has their ghosts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think! Constructive criticism, nitpicks, and all of that are always welcome, so don't be afraid to let me know of that stuff. Updates should be fairly regular since the first draft of the entire story is nearly completed.

The Burned Tower had been an ashy, one-story wreck of a building, but now it’s just a pile of wood and rubble, and maybe bodies too. The news hasn’t explicitly mentioned bodies, only named the men who were working inside the Burned Tower (now Burned Debris), but Zoe can guess as much. It’s a fallen building. There have to be bodies, there has to be a culprit, there has to be—

“Was it Team Rocket?”

It’s Sakura who asks, one of the youngest of the Kimono Sisters. She looks as though she is the youngest, curled up as she is on the couch, knees up, toes curled, Eevee held tight to her chest. He’s one of three Eevee still in the house. He’ll be a Leafeon soon enough, when she turns sixteen, but right now he’s a ball of cream and brown fluff, ears still twitching like they were a few minutes ago when they all heard the rumble of the Burned Once-Was Tower.

Sakura’s twin Sumomo sits on the other end of the couch. She sits still, so still. Not like the tower that shifted and fell, but like a stone, like a mannequin, like prey that thinks those sharp teeth and bright eyes can’t see it if it doesn’t move.

No, not sharp teeth and bright eyes. White suits and red R’s.

“Maybe,” Sumomo says, so quietly that Zoe guesses what she says. So quietly that Sakura doesn’t acknowledge her. So quietly that the twins’ older sister Kuni sighs over her response without thinking she might have said something.

“You can’t just assume that,” Kuni tells Sumomo. But Zoe can see that she agrees. Kuni is entertaining the thought, imagining black suits and white suits and red red R’s sneaking into the tower and blowing it up, like compensation for unsuccessfully taking over the Radio Tower two months ago. Like a promise they made to Johto.

But it’s not a rational thought. Zoe knows this, despite the sweat on her back and the thoughts and memories and fear in her head. It’s not a rational thought. Who blows up a ruin of a building in the midst of restoration? Who blows up rubble when there’s a landmark ten minutes away? Not anyone intelligent, not anyone sane (though she’ll always always argue that Archer wasn’t, isn’t, and won’t be sane, and she’ll argue that she’s not arguing for the sake of her guilt)—and she sees that Kuni knows this. That Kuni is asking herself the same questions. Her face may be covered in makeup, but the foundation and lipstick and eyeliner do nothing to conceal the thoughts running through her head. They’re thoughts she can’t afford to have now. She has a performance to worry about. She can’t worry about terrorists and extremists, not now, not again, not ever again. 

Zoe can’t worry about it either. Not because _she_ has to perform (Zuki can attest to her inability to dance, anyway), but because if she does worry, she’ll think of the rooftop. She’ll think of curling black metal, of binoculars, of white suits that shouldn’t be able to glow in sunlight—

“—Ned Hansen and Richard Harris,” the anchorwoman says, “were last seen working inside the Burned Tower before it collapsed. A rescue party is still searching for these last two workers.”

Ned and Richard. Zoe doesn’t know them personally, much like Kuni and the rest of her sisters, but she recognizes their names. Morty mentioned them while talking of restoration plans, saying who was on the team and what they would be doing. He told her like she cared. And she did care, but she wasn’t as invested. She wasn’t invested in much after the Radio Tower. Still isn’t. Just about the only thing she can do passionately—compulsively, really—is visit the Bellchime Trail.

Ned and Richard, Ned and Richard. Maybe they’ll end up among those golden leaves, but it’s not a kind thought. It’s a horrible one, the kind that makes her think of slabs of gray and black with names and words and dates etched into them. Seventeen slabs of stone, to be precise, but she shouldn’t be counting them, shouldn’t even be thinking about them—

So she focuses on their names. Ned and Richard, Ned and Richard. She can’t remember if Morty introduced them to her, but right now, she pretends he did. She pretends Ned is a stout man. Heavyset, nearly bald, probably owns a Magmar or even a Magby, but definitely not a Magmortar; he doesn’t like Pokémon that are taller than him. And she pretends Richard is tall and wiry. He’s nervous and stutters a lot. Probably owns a Pokémon that’s small and shy like him, something wispy. A Gastly or Misdreavus, she thinks, but that’s stereotypical for someone who lives in Ecruteak. Not everyone here has ghosts.

But she’s seen enough to know that’s not true.

That’s when the biggest ghost-owner—the ghost-hoarder, really, he’s got at least twelve ghosts behind him, on him, in his eyes at all times—that’s when Morty calls her on her Pokégear, this new, slender little thing with a touch screen that’s much more portable than her last one. It was a birthday gift from her parents, who insisted a twenty-two-year-old couldn’t go with such an old Pokégear model. She thought it was a strange gift. It made her feel like she was sixteen again.

She chokes on tongue and words and air when she answers it, and she doesn’t speak again until she clears her throat. “Yeah?”

“Did you hear about the tower?”

Kuni is looking at her. She must have heard Morty because there they are, the thoughts and memories and fear running through Kuni’s head, plain as day on her face, deep in the wrinkles of her forehead and etched into her stare. Zoe thinks the same. She thinks of the Radio Tower.

But Zoe looks at the television. That’s not the tower he’s talking about. “Yeah. Where are you? Are you—”

“I’m fine,” he answers hastily. “I need you to come down here.”

She picks at her nails. Kuni stares at the television. The twins are quiet. “To the tower?”

“Yeah. I... might need your help.”

She would have asked why, but the reason is present in his tone, quiet, sad, and uncertain as it is. Those seventeen slabs become nineteen. “Okay...”

He hangs up without further word, too worried, too hasty, too desperate to find them—and she understands that. But it feels like an added weight on her shoulders. The pressure of time. The phantom pressure on a limb or on lungs or on a life. She wonders if Ned and Richard feel any of those.

“What’s wrong?” Kuni asks. Her hand is curled around the back of the couch. Her other hand holds her Vaporeon’s Poké Ball.

Kuni’s question jolts the twins out of their stupor like a ringing ringing ringing alarm, and it’s almost like the two girls heard it again, like they were going to jump out of their seats and onto the floor. But they stayed. Sakura stared at her older sister, and Sumomo stared at the floor.

“Nothing,” Zoe lies—and she’s horrible at lying, always has been, even for the sake of other people. “Morty just needs me.”

Kuni’s grip on the Poké Ball relaxes. “Oh.”

Zoe nods. Sakura goes back to the television. Her Eevee mewls in her hold, and Zoe thinks of her Umbreon, Kayin. He’s in his Poké Ball now, sitting in the pocket of her dress, but she can’t bring him. He was her first Pokémon, a gift from the sisters’ mother, and he was a pet before he was a battler. He’s a family member. She can’t bring him. She couldn’t even bring him on her journey out of fear that he would end up like a certain Growlithe that she can’t allow herself to remember right now.

She can bring Geoff, though. He’s a sturdy Graveler, and reliable too. His Poké Ball is already in her pocket. She can bring him this time, in case those R’s return—though it doesn’t make sense that they _would_ return, she reminds herself. But still. Still. Just in case. The R is for Rocket but it’s also for return.

It’s for Radio, too.

She breathes out. A tiny huff and puff of air and her fingertips find Kayin’s Poké Ball. She knows it’s his by feel. It’s the only one without a dent in the hinge, the only one she’s never hurled at the ground for a sudden fight. She plans to never hurl it for that reason, but as she steps out of the Kimono Sisters’ home, she knows she might have to make an exception today.

The weight of her steps echoes in her chest as she walks. But the weight of Kayin and Geoff’s Poké Balls, light as they are, echo more loudly. She hears their soft thuds, like little love taps against her leg, in her head and in her memories. Like fear and guilt. Like adrenaline. Like just her own damn pulse, she tells herself. It makes her arms shaky and her palms sweaty and her mind overactive with memories. Her legs are heavy but she keeps moving, keeps trying not to think of black and white and red and gold. She tightens her grip around Kayin’s Poké Ball, still sitting in her pocket. She tries to think of something happy, of something unrelated to Goldenrod and the Bellchime Trail, but the best she can get is Zuki.

Zuki, who she’s known since she was ten. Zuki who’s probably on stage right now, in that night-sky kimono that makes her look that much more beautiful. She might be dancing or playing an instrument, or maybe she’s in the back waiting to perform, chatting with her sisters, with her twin or the triplets or even just Kuni—if Kuni is there. If Kuni already left the house and left their younger sisters to stare at the television in confusion and fear. Which she wouldn’t. She must have brought them with her. They would think about it too much otherwise. Like she is now.

She considers letting Kayin out. She doesn’t.

There’s an ambulance and police and a crowd at the rubble, words and yells and sirens singing a song of panic. Morty is out front, arms crossed, fingers tapping, looking from the rubble to the police to the paramedics to her, and he waves her over and waits to walk her to the ruins.

“Anyone else might say you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he tells her, with some wry smile playing at his lips. He doesn’t uncross his arms.

She would glare at him if she weren’t so upset, but she is. She settles for gritted teeth and narrowed eyes. It’s a horrible choice of words on his part, considering what happened and what might have happened, and he realizes that when he sees her reaction. He sighs apologetically, almost embarrassedly. “We found one of the missing workers. Richard.” He nods toward the ambulance. She doesn’t turn to look, but it seems like the flashing red lights of the vehicles glow brighter and blink faster.

She can’t keep her eyes on any one thing. Not on Morty, not on the tower, not on the red light flickering over the scene. The former tower is just a pile of wood and ash, surrounded by policemen and their Growlithe and Arcanine. Though that’s not to say the building was in much better condition before today. It was still nothing but charred wooden walls and the one-story remains of a pagoda. Just four ashen walls. No door, no roof, and holes in the floor for “quick access to the cellar,” as one of the mediums, Martha, once put it.

Zoe takes a deep breath. She closes her hand around the other Poké Ball in her pocket, the one that holds Geoff. “You think he’s buried under…”

Morty nods. It’s like a half-nod, like he doesn’t have the energy or hope to nod completely. “Richard said he thinks Ned was in the basement when it fell. And I just… I have a bad feeling.”

She grits her teeth. She braces herself. She walks toward the ruins with Morty.

She doesn’t send out Geoff, not even after she and Morty split up to cover more ground. There are enough policemen around, she figures, and Morty is here. Whitney wasn’t there when it happened, and the policemen were too late. So maybe, if it _is_ Team Rocket, they can’t get far, despite the fact that it probably _was_ just a building collapse and not a terrorist attack. It couldn’t have been a terrorist attack.

But her grip around the Poké Ball tightens.

A man stands at the perimeter of the rubble. He’s big-bellied with a puff of dye-yellow hair, frowning at the scene before him. But the way he stands is nebulous and wispy, like he’s not really there. He sees her staring at him and he perks up, he waves at her, and he waves her over when she acknowledges him. But her steps toward him are slow and heavy. Her heart pounds and echoes in her chest again, but not with fear and the same memories. Instead of the Radio Tower, she thinks of the gym, of her home, of the Bellchime Trail. Instead of fear, she feels sorrow.

The man taps his fingers together nervously, bouncing on his toes like he doesn’t know what to do, what to say, or how to act. “Can you—can you help me?” he asks.

She sighs. Maybe he knows, maybe he can’t accept it, maybe finding him beneath everything would help, but she’s not the person to explain it to him. Not now. “I… I think Morty can help you more than I can,” she tells him. She doesn’t look him in the eye.

“Oh!” He keeps tapping his fingers together, and he turns all around looking for the gym leader, dancing in circle on his feet. He could have been a performer, she thinks. Not a performer like Zuki or her sisters, but maybe something like a fire breather. “He’s here?” he asks. “Could you bring me to him?”

She bites her lip. Pulls out her Pokégear. “I could tell him to come here,” she says as she dials Morty’s number. The digits are seared into her memory. They have been ever since she was a kid. For safety reasons, as her parents had insisted.

“Oh, you know him?” the man asks. He’s bouncing on his toes, still bouncing, like he’s ready to sprint out of her sight and vanish. She thinks of an old man she and Morty met in Mahogany some years ago, a crying, talkative, finally-at-peace old man who vanished into the sunset over the Lake of Rage.

The phone rings in her ear. She flinches. “Yeah.”

There’s a click, and Morty’s voice follows. “Did you—?”

“Just come around,” she tells him, because she can’t answer his question. It’s too hard to say. She looks at the bouncy, wispy, nervous man, looks beyond him to a pair of policemen. One of them gives orders to his Growlithe. The other gives her a questioning look. She thinks to show him the Fog Badge she has, because she doesn’t feel like shouting, she doesn’t have the energy to yell that she’s with Morty. But that badge is too small anyway, and the policeman goes back to his job quickly enough. “We’re around the northern side? Northwestern?”

She catches Morty breathing out the question, “We?” before the line goes dead in her ear.

The man bounces again. “He’s on his way?”

She nods. “Um… Can I ask… where you found yourself? After it collapsed?” She keeps her eyes on the remains of the tower, on all the recognizable slabs of wood that made up walls, on all the tiles that hung onto the eaves before they fell and cracked. The tiles are covered in dust, but she thinks of how shiny they might have been when cleaned, back when the tower was a tower—the Brass Tower, and not a Burned Tower or a once-was tower. They might have shined like a mirror, but they’re broken now. Maybe Ecruteak is cursed with a few years of bad luck.

“Where I was?” the man asks. She doesn’t look at him, can’t look at him, but she imagines him very clearly, bouncing and tapping his fingers together. She wonders if he did that when Morty gave him the job.

She thinks of the Bellchime Trail again and grits her teeth.

“Uh, I think I was in the basement. Woke up with a really bad pain in my neck,” he says with a nervous laugh. “But it left pretty quickly and I found my way back up here.”

“Ah.”

“I tried asking the police for help but… Oh! Morty!”

She flinches at his cheer, flinches at Morty’s expected response, and she tries for as long as she can not to turn to either of the men. But she has to at some point. So she turns. And there is Morty, staring at the man with crestfallen eyes.

Morty used to own a Mismagius named Aimi. She wonders if this was how he looked when she died.

“Broken neck,” she tells him, before he can ask anything.

“Huh?” the man asks, nervous smile on his face like he knows what’s going on but won’t admit it, can’t admit it, doesn’t want to admit it.

“You should have the police search for his body in the basement,” she says, but Morty hardly pays attention to her.

He stares at Ned. Reaches out to him. Tries to grab him by the shoulder but his hand goes right through. Because Ned isn’t really there. He’s a ghost now. Another ghost for Morty to hoard.


	2. Chapter 2

Zoe lives in Ecruteak City, but she wasn’t born here and isn’t from here, though her status as a medium would suggest otherwise; what more suitable place could there be for someone like her than Ecruteak City? She has wondered in the past if that were what drove her family to move here from New Bark Town, if it were the hand of fate that led them here. She has always thought it was a strange thing to think, that fate is something that exists, but not so strange that it was inappropriate.

She still entertains that thought sometimes, and whenever she wonders why, she only thinks of her parents’ story of when they moved to Ecruteak. She was six, they were hardly settled into the house, and one night, according to her parents, she started talking to someone in her closet. A nameless girl. Nameless because, as Zoe apparently explained to them, she had died and couldn’t remember what her name was.

That was how they had met Morty, who realized her gift and offered to train her in the gym as a medium, and who later taught her to be a trainer at her request. She was from New Bark Town, after all. She knew Professor Elm, she knew the Pokémon he gave out (and she was, is, and always will be especially fond of the Cyndaquil line), and she knew that every year, plenty of young men and women arrived in New Bark to see him, receive a Pokémon, and leave on some grand adventure. She wanted that. And she got it.

Morty had offered to give her a Pokémon himself two years ago, a Gastly or a Misdreavus—he really wanted to give her a Misdreavus, because of Aimi—but it wouldn’t have been the same. It wouldn’t have felt _right_. So she went to New Bark Town instead. She left Kayin behind, then a seven-year-old Umbreon too sad to see her go, and her parents would call and tell her how he would sit by the door waiting for her to come back. She always felt bad about that, always had that image and the sound of his whimpering playing on repeat in her head. But it was the wiser and safer choice. She didn’t want him to end up like that Growlithe, like Terry, poor little ghost running around his grave until his trainer finally visited.

It was no surprise to anyone that she chose a Cyndaquil, not even to Elm. “A fairly popular choice,” he said, in a good-natured way that didn’t suggest to her he would have been more impressed if she chose the Chikorita. He lifted the Fire-type’s Poké Ball off that machine—a large, metallic-white thing that she still imagines as a giant Poké Ball—and released him. Little Ashton. Tiny little Ashton, this ball of cream and blue fur (not cream and brown, and not nearly as fluffy as Kayin once was) that curled around his front legs and wouldn’t quite look at her. “This one’s a little shy, though,” Elm told her, like she couldn’t see that for herself. But she paid him no mind, paid the shyness no mind—smiled at it in fact, because even if Ashton was nervous, he was still adorable and still a Cyndaquil. And she had wanted a Cyndaquil since she was a child. Had wanted one since she spoke to that nameless girl in her closet while she hugged the Cyndaquil doll she owned (and might still have, somewhere, though it would be hard to look at now).

It took a minute to coax Ashton into her arms, and another minute to name him, and after Elm gave her the rest of her things (a Pokédex, extra Poké Balls, a Potion), she left. She was still holding Ashton when they left New Bark. He was curled against her shoulder. But he got over it quickly enough.

Ashton, she soon discovered, wasn’t a bad battler. Yes, he was a young Pokémon, and yes, all he really knew to do was ram his head into Rattata or Pidgey or Sentret—but there was power in his Tackles and determination in his movements. There was something about the way he hunched his small body and lowered himself to the ground that made her think of Morty’s gym. It gave her confidence. Not only in Ashton but in her ability to bring out the battler in him. By the time they reached Cherrygrove, he was walking beside her.

Geoff and Tony weren’t like Ashton when she met them. They weren’t shy and hesitant. She carried Ashton out of Elm’s lab, but the then-Geodude and then-Bellsprout followed her footsteps without issue.

She wonders why they did, sometimes. Sometimes she even entertains the thought of fate having had something to do with it—though that doesn’t make much sense because Geoff and Tony weren’t there that day. So she tries to rationalize why they joined her. She can do that with Geoff, because Geoff was a small, but certainly not timid, Geodude who couldn’t hold his own against a swarm of Zubat. And what a pitiful thing that was to come across, a rock that couldn’t crush a cloud of leathery wings. But there it was, a nonsensical scene that played itself before her in the light of Ashton’s fire and in the shadows of the Dark Cave. 

It took a cloud of fire to scare the Zubat away, a cloud of heat they could feel, a cloud of light they couldn’t see—enough orange light to make the cave walls and stalactites into a mouth of fangs that reminded Zoe she didn’t belong there. 

The Zubat’s shrieks went up, in volume and in space, and went around her, behind her, beside her, above her, in tandem with the mess of wings and fangs that roared and rushed into the cave, away from that terrible heat. All that stayed behind was the Geodude. She intended to leave him behind, intended to turn around and walk back the way she came and go straight on to Violet City, because the cave seemed too ready to swallow her and that Geodude seemed too ready to lose a fight. 

“We should head back,” she told Ashton, turning on her heel and rubbing warmth into her jacket sleeves. 

Ashton made some squeaky noise in response, and the light of his fire moved as he followed her. His footsteps were inaudible over her own, which were muted enough by the uneven ground, a dull sound against rock that made her miss the creaky wooden floors of her home and the theater and the gym. But there was another set of sounds over her footsteps as they started their trek out of the cave. A scraping noise that she couldn’t place, one that made her blood rush and made her think the cave sent something after her.

But it was just the Geodude, dragging himself across the ground, following them all the way to the mouth of the cave and out. And when she saw the tracks of dredged-up dirt and grass that he left behind, she gave in and tapped a Poké Ball to his head. It didn’t take her long to come up with the name Geoff for him. 

Tony didn’t seem to follow her out of obligation. He just did, at random and without reason, and she couldn’t and can’t rationalize why he did, can’t assign a purpose to him tagging along. “Uh,” was all she even said to the yellow bell that held a careful and curious vine over Ashton. The Bellsprout stood there, swaying the way Bellsprout do, the way Violet’s tower does. He was calm. And a little creepy. She opened her mouth to say something to him, but the way he stared at Ashton unnerved her, and she looked around for a trainer that might have owned him.

But then Ashton growled and flared his back and bared his tiny teeth, and the Bellsprout danced a step back and turned to Zoe. He swayed and held his vines over her hair and bag and Poké Balls, and she thought of Zuki performing her dance.

Tony practically caught himself, poking at her Poké Balls like he did, not two hours after Geoff became a part of their small team. Three Pokémon to her name as a trainer. They were all she entered Violet’s gym with, and they were all she needed.

They were all she needed in Azalea’s gym, too, but someone else was around for Goldenrod: a Drowzee that didn’t hide and didn’t follow but came along nonetheless. The first one Zoe caught by choice (and by force) and the first that didn’t seem to like her. 

And who could blame the Drowzee? Who could blame a Pokémon for disliking her trainer when she was just minding her business on Route 33? When suddenly there came a human with a distracted Bellsprout, one of them running, the other one swaying, the red glint of a Poké Ball hovering over the Drowzee that, though not helpless, didn’t really stand a chance as a result of her poor aim. Which worried Zoe. She hesitated to throw the Great Ball at the Drowzee because time and time again, Tony would dance away from her Pounds and sway past her Confusions, and what good was strength that always missed its mark? 

But Zoe caught her anyway. She chucked that Great Ball with the aim her target didn’t have, and it fell to the ground, shook, shook, shook, clicked, and Lilith joined the team. 

Lilith never did quite improve her aim, which was a shame because oh, what a saving grace Hypnosis could and can be—though it wasn’t like that mattered, not at that time. At that time, those imprecise sleeping spells made no difference, and it was mainly Geoff who carried them out of Goldenrod’s gym anyway. (No Stomp or Rollout could faze him, after all.) Four to Zoe’s team, three badges on her belt, and her next stop was home.

Home. A place where wood was welcoming and gold was familiar, in a time when towers didn’t freeze her muscles, her breath, and her heart. She didn’t enter Ecruteak then, two years ago, with her blood pounding in her ears. Instead, she entered with air in her chest and her head, with nervousness bubbling inside her, because coming to Ecruteak meant showing how far she had gotten. It meant sharing stories and catching up. It meant battling her mentor and, more importantly, besting him.

She thought to visit her parents first. To stop by her house, to lie in her bed, to _sleep_ in her bed for the first time in what felt like forever. She thought she’d find her father napping on the couch and her mother in the garden, planting every kind of berry and every kind of apricorn imaginable. That was when she thought she should leave Tony with them. Three Pokémon were all she needed on her team, and Tony wouldn’t be the best choice for future gym battles. Besides, she was sure Kayin could use a playmate while the Kimono Sisters were performing with their Pokémon. 

Kayin. She missed Kayin. She missed him and she missed Zuki and she thought instead that she would first stop by Zuki’s home instead of her own. Kayin was bound to be with her anyway. 

But something about that, something about seeing _Zuki_ , made her anxious. Enough so that she _did_ hear her pulse in her ears, and she started to worry about how she looked—if her clothes were in order, if her hair looked combed or even clean, if she had changed or if Zuki had changed in the past two months. That last thought was the most absurd, but it was the one that stuck. The one that echoed in her head and brought ideas and fears to life in her imagination.

So she decided not to go by Zuki’s home. She chose to steer clear of the theater, of her own home, of even the gym and the Bell Tower—and that really only left one place: the Burned Tower, in a time when it was still standing a story tall, when its ashen walls were still up, when it existed as a ruin but as more than rubble. That was precisely why she went there. For its decrepit state. For the fact that it was closed to the public and open only to those on the recently-formed restoration committee. And it was Sunday. No one would be there. So she climbed over the short metal fence that was set up around the tower, straightened her clothes, (longed to wear a dress again,) and stepped inside.

The sun shined in. It bathed the wood, the ash, the rocks in gold, like the sun took pity on the remnants of a once beautiful pagoda. Like it wanted to paint the ruins as golden as the Bellchime Forest, like it could revive the Burned Tower with its warm silence. The wood creaked beneath Zoe’s feet, and while she was careful not to walk too heavily for fear that the floor would give way, she couldn’t help but walk in awe. She had never seen the inside of the Burned Tower before, or the inside of any burned building before. She expected the interior to reflect the 150-year-old tragedy she heard in stories all her life, that one legend that Ecruteak is so well-known for. She expected to walk in and freeze when a rush of not-memories came to her, searing the rain, the lightning, the fire into her mind with such vividness she would have sworn it _was_ a memory, that she _was_ there and _did_ witness countless sages running out of the building as fast as their legs could carry them, countless sages being trapped under fallen wood, countless sages being too old or too weak or too ready to escape—to imagine all those deaths, all the smoke and all the screams, that was what she expected.

But she found peace instead.

She took a seat on what seemed to be a fallen stone pedestal and let her Pokémon out: Ashton, Geoff, Tony, and, after some hesitation, Lilith. They all appeared before her in a flash of red light that melted into the golden afternoon. Ashton was a Quilava then, no longer prone to curling up and hiding from the world. He was taller, sleeker, bolder with those plumes of fire that could burst from his head and tail at Zoe’s command.

Geoff was still a Geodude, still small and still clingy, still staying by Zoe’s side while Ashton wandered away and Tony danced further into the building in the odd way that only Weepinbell could. Odder still than when he was a Bellsprout.

But Lilith kept her distance. Lilith kept her arms crossed, kept her eyes narrowed, and kept her glare on Zoe despite the friendly wave she gave the Drowzee.

“I thought maybe we could take a minute and just relax?” Zoe told them. Told Lilith, mostly. She didn’t have to keep eye contact with the others to make sure they were listening. Though when it came to Tony, it wasn’t like he ever listened anyway. In fact, Tony was staring up at the edges of what was left of the ceiling. He was staring at the small family of Zubat that hung there sleeping.

Zoe didn’t notice the bats. She didn’t notice until a few minutes later, after Lilith decided she was tired of glaring at her and sat on the steps leading out of the tower. She didn’t notice until Tony shrieked in the oddly terrifying way that Weepinbell and Victreebel could, when the shrill sound sent the Zubat stirring, flapping, fluttering like mad—and Geoff thought of the Dark Cave, and Zoe rolled her eyes, and Ashton flared the fire on his back, and Lilith didn’t care.

“Tony!” she called, exasperated and too tired to stand from her makeshift seat.

Tony shrieked and flinched and raised the leaves on his sides to shield himself from stray wings and fangs, but his movement only stirred up the Zubat more, and Ashton got tired of it. Ashton crouched and puffed smoke from his nostrils, and that was enough to show Zoe what she hadn’t seen before, for her to see the tower going up in flames.

Ashton shot forth with a Quick Attack before she could stop him, white light streaking from his hind legs as he rushed to Tony’s side, rushed into the body of a Zubat that had his fangs closed around Tony’s leaf. The bat cried out, let go, and a Headbutt from Ashton sent him flying into a support beam. The walls shook. No one felt it.

Ashton barked and opened his mouth wide to collect fire. Zoe shot up from her seat. “Ashton, don’t!” When the Quilava gave her a confused look, wincing now and then from the swarming Zubat with their flailing wings and sharp shrieks, she threw a hand out in frustration. “Just use the fire on your back to scare them! We don’t need this place going up in flames again!”

He put his energy into fueling the flames on his back, sending up a pillar of heat that scared the Zubat away, that outshined the sunlight, that sent the shadows receding into the walls for fear of another fire. But when the flames and the heat and the shrieks died, the sunlight came back. The shadows returned. There wasn’t anything to fear anymore, not the flames, not the swarm, not even the lone Zubat that lay propped against the support beam.

“Tony, you can’t just yell at everything that you’re curious about,” Zoe sighed, wondering how and if her parents and Kayin could put up with him.

But of course, Tony wasn’t listening. He was busy staring at the one Zubat, his little wings and stick legs moving slowly as he regained consciousness. Ashton stared too, head tilted, flames gone, throat making a warbling, curious sound. It was a soft noise, but Zoe managed to hear it, and she knew it well enough that it piqued her interest in whatever her Pokémon were staring at. She walked toward them. Geoff followed closely behind. Lilith twitched her ears, but she didn’t move from her seat at the stairs.

“What?” she asked, and when she finally saw the Zubat, she thought of Morty. She thought of his ghosts and she thought of Lilith, and as she reached for an empty Poké Ball, she figured a Zubat would be a better choice than a Drowzee.

A flash of red light, Lilith made a sound, the Poké Ball snapped shut, and with three blinks, it clicked. Zoe’s mind raced with thoughts—of strategies, attacks, evolutions, of regret at the fact that she hadn’t purchased a Friend Ball from Kurt in Azalea—but they were cut short by Lilith’s sudden squeal of alarm, by two sets of voices and two sets of footsteps.

“A Drowzee?”

“Hm. Those aren’t very common around these parts, huh.”

Both male, both familiar.

“No…”

“Think it belongs to someone? Or maybe this adorable little one wanted to go on an adventure? You seem like you’d do that.” Cooing. “Don’t you, you adorable little Drow—”

Lilith squealed. Let out a short whistle of anger.

Zoe jumped, turned—gaped. Because there was Eusine, grimacing from pain, red bowtie still under his chin, giving pathetic _ow ow ow_ ’s while Lilith stood before him, eyes glowing bright as she twisted his pointed hand with Confusion. “L-Lilith!” Zoe called.

Lilith ignored her. Eusine noticed her. Some of the pain left his face when he recognized her. And Morty stepped through the tower’s entrance.

Zoe frowned. “Lilith, _stop_.”

The Drowzee finally looked her way, and after a second of contemplation, she dropped Eusine’s hand and snorted.

“Thank you, Zoe…” he whimpered.

She hardly had the chance to acknowledge his thanks with a nod before Morty gave her a playful frown. “You’re home and you didn’t let me know?”

“Home?” Eusine asked, because he was always travelling and wasn’t in Ecruteak when she left two months ago.

Zoe shrugged, and noted the fact that apparently Morty hadn’t told Eusine that she had started her journey. She had the thought that maybe she should try to keep Eusine in the loop about it herself, but he was more Morty’s friend than her own. “I’ve only been in Ecruteak for… maybe an hour?”

Eusine asked, “You left Ecruteak?” but since he was staring at her Pokémon and at Ashton in particular, she decided to let him put the pieces together himself.

“That’s still no reason not to let me know!” Morty told her. The words seemed like they should have sounded disappointed, but he wasn’t. He was happy. Smiling in a way that she wasn’t used to seeing, in a way that reminded her of all the times Eusine had returned from one of his adventures. Morty came up to her and gave her a tight, fatherly hug, and she suddenly missed her parents.

Morty stood back and held her at arms’ length. He patted her head, like he was taking pity on how disheveled she must have looked and decided, for once, not to ruffle her hair. “You’re okay?”

She swatted his hand away, but she was smiling. “Of course I’m okay. Don’t act like we haven’t been keeping in touch.”

And then came Eusine’s sudden, “Zoe!” and she knew without looking at the man and his bowtie that he had figured it out. He was holding Ashton in his arms, stroking the top of the Quilava’s head with so much affection and with such a big smile on his face that Zoe thought back to her thirteenth birthday. To the day she received Kayin from the Kimono Sisters’ mother.

Ashton was smiling and leaning up into Eusine’s touch, paws batting at the air happily.

“Zoe, you started your Pokémon journey?!”

She laughed softly. Eusine must have been forty years old (a correct guess on her part) but somehow he looked and sounded like a proud and overly happy teenager. “Yes, I did.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” he asked. Whined, really. “Morty, _you_ didn’t tell me?”

“We had other things to talk about.”

Eusine frowned and pressed his cheek to Ashton’s head. “You could have mentioned it. You could have told me Zoe went and got herself an adorable Quilava.”

Ashton yipped happily.

“Oh, and a Weepinbell and that Drowzee and—is that Geodude yours?”

Zoe looked down at Geoff, who was still just behind her. He stared up at her curiously, then looked at Morty and Eusine and Ashton looking so so happy. “Yeah. And I caught a Zubat just now,” she added, holding up the Poké Ball still in her hand. She wondered briefly what to call it (she wouldn’t come up with the name Cyrus until later) and then turned to Morty. “So I’d say you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

“With your freshly caught Zubat?” He raised an eyebrow. The way he crossed his arms was both proud and lighthearted.

And suddenly she was nervous again. She bit the inside of her lip. She was going to battle her _teacher_ , after all, her mentor Morty who taught her just about everything she knew. But in two months she had surely learned a few tricks of her own. She nodded, though she hesitated and he noticed. “Yep.”

He looked at the Poké Ball in her hand. She didn’t know he was thinking about Lilith. She didn’t know he was thinking that she still had a long way to go as a trainer. She didn’t know that he was thinking of other trainers, of other freshly-caught Pokémon, of slabs of stone in the forest. “Make it a good fight then,” he told her, and she didn’t think anything of it.

Not that Eusine would have given her a chance to think about Morty’s words, because he gasped loudly and suddenly, looking at the back wall of the tower, at something standing on the other side of the hole in the floor. “Zoe, that’s not yours is it…?”

She looked and Morty looked and the two of them were equally perplexed.

There was a Vaporeon on the other side of the room, standing in a patch of sunlight. Though the sun seemed to shine right through it. Its image seemed to waver in the heat, and they thought it might have been a ghost. But Eusine could see it. And it had a shadow. Though, a shadow too big and too misshapen for its body.

“No…” she answered.

There was silence.

Until the wind blew and the Vaporeon leaped over the gap in the floor and all but flew past them and out the tower’s entrance.

Ashton squealed when Eusine dropped him to give chase to the Pokémon, wood groaning after him. “I have to catch that Suicune!” he yelled.

Zoe stared. From the door to Morty to the spot on the other side of the room. She thought of the storm, of the sages dying in the tower, of Pokémon dying in the tower. She thought of the night Kayin evolved, just outside these ashen walls, when they found the ghost of an angry boy. And she wondered how many had died here.


	3. Chapter 3

Ned is behind them, still following, still talking, still wondering and panicking and never once staying quiet. He talks and talks all the way from the Burned Tower to the gym: “What do you mean I’m dead? What am I supposed to do now? I never got to say goodbye to anyone. I can’t be dead,” and he says this and he asks that and Zoe doesn’t know how she doesn’t turn and yell at him. She doesn’t know how she keeps quiet or how she lets Morty try to calm him down without letting her impatience get the better of her. She walks heavily, fists stuffed in her pockets, fingers closed around Geoff and Kayin’s Poké Balls—head ducked, shoulders hunched, eyes never looking up from the concrete.

Shut up, she thinks as she remembers the golden forest, as she remembers the sunlight on the rubble, on the tower, in the tower. She thinks of her first return to Ecruteak, of those ashen walls, of Lilith twisting Eusine’s hand. She thinks of Eusine’s bowtie and his confused face and how she let him put the pieces together and figure out that she had started her journey. Shut up, she thinks, because Ned can figure this out for himself too.

Georgina is the one who lets them into the gym. She’s an old, slight woman, and though her cheeks are sunken, she always has a smile on her face and something colorful on her person. She greets them today with her usual, toothy grin, holding up a vivid paper lantern that she surely plans to hang somewhere in the gym. But when she sees Ned, pity fills her face. “Oh, darling,” she starts, but Zoe doesn’t stay long enough to hear the rest of her words. She greets Georgina with a hand on her shoulder and a muttered, “Hello,” and walks past her.

The main room of the gym is large, lit mostly by candles and filled with the smell of incense. There aren’t any stands for crowds wishing to watch the battle (“Audiences make it hard to concentrate,” Morty once told her), but there is one bench on either side of the black mat that marks the battlefield. Zoe walks past the field—remembering her battle against Morty two years ago, remembering the boy with the Growlithe and the girl with the Girafarig—and makes her way to the back.

The sliding door at the back leads to a wooden room with light floors, tatami mats, and cushions on the ground. It’s as candlelit as the main room of the gym, but it seems so much brighter with the paper lanterns that Georgina has already begun stringing across the room. 

Zoe steps inside, finally letting go of the Poké Balls in her pocket to shut the door behind herself. And she stands there. And waits. Not leaning on the paper wall behind her, but finding comfort in its presence. It’s tangible, after all.

Her ears still pick up their conversation (what’s going on’s and it’s okay’s and this is what will happen now’s), but the sound of a cup hitting the low table in the center of the room suddenly drowns out their words. “You know, girl,” starts Martha with her brazen voice, “you do too much of that ‘barging in and standing around like a creep’ thing.”

Zoe frowns. She looks up to see Martha smirking at her. The elderly woman’s grin creases the skin around her mouth, on her forehead, and between her eyebrows. One of her hands holds her cup (tea? sake? probably sake) and the other lays flat on the table, fingers drumming the wood in a show of boredom or impatience. Her Misdreavus floats by her side, glaring at her trainer.

Across from them sits Grace, sipping at a drink of her own and staring at Martha over the rim of her cup. She carefully sets her drink down and turns it between her hands. “ _You_ do too much of that ‘insulting others for no reason’ thing.” Her Haunter cackles after she speaks and spins once in the air above the table. The Ghost-type is a violet, dancing shadow, all eyes and teeth and hands. She holds out a hand toward Zoe in hello, an eerie grin stretched across her face.

Zoe holds up a hesitant hand in return just as Martha scoffs and waves Grace’s words away. “It’s not an insult,” Martha assures her. “Just an expression of fact.”

“Not with a neutral tone.”

“Oh, don’t lecture me, Grace.”

And so begins their bickering.

The Misdreavus sighs and floats to a distant corner of the room, but the Haunter turns in place, following the elderly mediums’ voices and growing more and more interested in their disagreement.

Zoe bites her lip. Her fingers brush the paper wall behind her. “I didn’t come here to listen to you argue,” she grumbles, hoping and not hoping that they would take pity on her. Because if they didn’t, she could just leave. But if they did, they would ask and she would have to tell them what happened—would have to explain, would have to remember and try not to remember, and she’d rather not do that.

“Then go find some other place,” Martha laughs, waving her away. Zoe feels disappointed.

Grace asks, “Is something wrong?” and she still feels disappointed.

Martha sips from her cup again and raises an eyebrow, while Grace’s Haunter makes a strange, curious sound. The ghost hides her teeth in favor of a concerned expression, but the way her eyes stare is unnerving. The Misdreavus is more calming to watch, though she’s hardly interested in the conversation. She simply floats back to the table and settles by Grace’s side watching the wood.

Zoe presses her lips together. Bites the inside of her cheek. She thinks of towers. Of rubble and bells and radios, of R’s and red and black and white, of gold and gray and stone. “Someone died.”

“Well that’s not new,” Martha scoffs.

Grace glares at her. The Haunter cackles. The Misdreavus doesn’t look up from the table.

And if she were in the mood for it, Zoe would roll her eyes. “When the tower fell,” she explains. She stuffs her hands in her pockets and closes her fingers around Kayin’s Poké Ball. She brushes a fingertip over its smooth surface. Over its undented hinge. “Just now. One of the workers died.”

There’s a pause. Both mediums stare at her, and both Pokémon stay still, until Martha loudly drums her fingers and asks, “Did you know ‘em?”

Zoe shakes her head, but as soon as she does, she regrets doing so; Martha would just shrug it off and say, _Well it’s not like you knew ‘em_ , and go back to her drink. Zoe’s fingernail traces the groove in Kayin’s Poké Ball, the black line that cuts the sphere in half.

But Martha doesn’t say anything flippant, or anything of the sort. Instead she picks up her cup, mutters, “Sorry,” and sips.

It surprises her. So much so that she stares at the woman. Even the Misdreavus gives her trainer a glance.

But Grace doesn’t look at Martha. No, Grace looks at Zoe, with a soft frown and soft eyes and tight hands around her cup. She scratches the outside of the glass and keeps giving Zoe that look, a look that reflects Martha’s silence and offers her something that she doesn’t know how to react to: pity. Which she can accept just fine from Grace (it’s in her nature, after all), but not from Martha.

The Haunter hisses and spins in the air, bored of all this quiet. And whether it’s to abate her Pokémon or not, Grace asks, “It just fell, right?”

Zoe nods, and Grace says, “Then it’s not like last time.”

And she hears two-month-old alarms in her head.

She thinks of sunlight and golden leaves.

“I know,” Zoe says, with a strained voice. She pulls Kayin’s Poké Ball out of her pocket and gives the mediums an apologetic smile. Martha raises an eyebrow at her. “I think I’m gonna… head out, while Morty handles the funeral arrangements.” _Again_ , she nearly adds.

She slides open the door behind her and steps back into the gym’s main room before Grace can finish saying, “Take care.” Before she can slide the door shut, she hears Martha mutter in jest, “I bet a thousand she’s gonna go see her girlfriend.” 

She frowns. Martha is talking about Zuki, and Martha is also going to be a few bills short because she’s not going to see Zuki. She’s not stopping by her home or by the dance theater, no. She’s going to the Bellchime Trail. And maybe, if she can, into the forest beyond it.

She rolls Kayin’s Poké Ball between her thumb and forefinger, watching the floor as she makes her way to the front door of the gym. Georgina and Morty and Ned—poor, confused, dead Ned—talk and walk toward the room she just left. There are two sets of clicking, creaking footsteps. Only two. One set of those steps, the heavier one, stops, and Morty calls her. She lifts her head just to look the part, just to seem like she’s okay and fine and everything’s fine even though he and the others know that’s not the case and hasn’t been the case since two months ago— She lifts her head and doesn’t look back and says, “I just need some air,” and he leaves her alone. She imagines he watches her leave sadly. Imagines that he hopes she’s not planning on going where she’s going, at least not now.

But it’s just the trail. Not the forest, not anymore, not even the tower. She can manage that.


	4. Chapter 4

She only lets Kayin out when she can no longer see the gym behind her. He appears like a shadow in the afternoon light, like the blot of darkness that stays in sight after a camera flashes or after the police car’s light makes its rounds. Or after someone in black holds a flashlight to her eyes for too long and it stays there, branded on the insides of her eyelids for far too long.

Zoe squeezes her eyes shut. She reminds herself that she’s in Ecruteak, on the streets. That the blackness in front of her isn’t Team Rocket or one of their Pokémon (and certainly nothing like a Houndoom) but Kayin.

Kayin barks happily at her, circles her tightly, and rubs his head against her leg. He makes a low sound in his throat, like the purr of a Meowth.

She smiles at him and pets his head. His fur is short and smooth and not at all the way it used to be when he was just a tiny Eevee. “How are you?” she asks, and she longs for the days when he was small enough for her to carry him.

He leans into her touch and yips, tail wagging like any domestic canine, like that Growlithe she still doesn’t want to remember. Like little Terry, a pet turned battler and the main reason why Zoe refused to bring Kayin along on her journey. Her hand rests atop Kayin’s head. He looks up at her, concerned by the sudden lack of scratches, and she gives him a sad smile. “I thought maybe we’d… go to the trail today?”

His ears and tail droop a little, but he perks up, moves his head to lick her palm, and runs encouragingly ahead a few steps. He looks back at her. Barks. Waits. He’s patient like that.

She takes a deep breath, and they walk.

The sages at the barrier station to the Bell Tower don’t question her arrival. They know her well enough—have known her since she was six—and she has come through here relatively often in the past two months. They never asked questions, and they didn’t begin to when she started coming through more frequently. They simply greeted her, with a hello or a bow, and left her be.

They do this now, with quiet _Hello, Zoe_ ’s and slight nods of their heads, and she bows and whispers her hellos in return. Kayin walks quietly by, ears and tail hanging a little low, but not low enough for the sages to take notice. Besides, they droop as much as they always have these past two months.

The stairs groan as they head down to the trail, nine steps protesting the weight of a young woman, her Umbreon, and whatever they carry. The floor creaks, creaks, creaks, and Zoe can hear it whispering in her ear, can hear the floor and the building and the nearby tower telling her she can still turn back, it isn’t too late to turn back— But she walks anyway, heavily, anxiously, floor dipping slightly beneath her weight.

They say the Bell Tower was built in the eastern part of Ecruteak because that is Ho-Oh’s realm. Because that is where the sun rises, where the day starts, where life begins.

Zoe frowns and thinks of the once-was Burned Tower in the west, in Lugia’s realm, where life and day end.

When she and Kayin step back out into the sunlight, onto the trail littered with golden leaves, she feels they’re in the wrong place.

It’s quiet. It’s always quiet here, serenely and eerily so. The trees stand tall above the trail and arch over it, and the sunlight filters through the canopy they create. Golden light through golden leaves, and it bathes the trail in a warm glow that has always been welcoming, despite what the trees hide and house.

She looks through the trees. Her heart hammers in her chest. She takes a deep breath.

Pauses.

Kayin brushes against her leg and she flinches.

She takes another breath. “Maybe… Maybe not today,” she tells him, and he whimpers and presses his snout to her hand. It’s his way of saying, _It’s okay_.

They walk through the trail slowly, feet kicking up piles of yellow-orange-red leaves. The leaves crunch under their steps, whisper as they slide over paw and shoe and leaf. It’s not a warning hush like that of the creaking floor, but a calm one. A welcoming one. One that makes her think of lit candles and the scent of her mother’s garden, of soil and lavender. She thinks of the gym and of the smell of incense, sweat, and dirty fur.

She thinks of the tower. Not of rubble or radios, but an actual tower, a standing tower, the pagoda at the end of the trail. She thinks of its curved eaves, of the shining blue tiles on its roofs, of the four bells hanging eleven stories above Ecruteak City. She thinks of the sunrise and Ho-Oh.

She looks up and sees the sky through the leaves. The sun is setting.

They walk. Stop. Stand. Stare. She hesitates. She won’t move. And Kayin won’t push her. So they stand in the middle of the trail, at the halfway point, right where the path forks. If they continue straight ahead, they’ll reach the tower. If they turn, they’ll enter the forest. Neither path seems promising.

But the wind stirs and the branches above move, swaying and hushing, leaves whispering and announcing the arrival of _something_ and it makes Zoe flinch. It makes every muscle in her body tense and she remembers that boy again, the angry one outside the Burned Tower from all those years ago, the one Kayin barked at though he couldn’t see him.

But that’s not what comes from the woods. It’s not a young boy, or the angry spirit of one.

It’s her Dragonite, Valeria.

She knows it’s Valeria not because she sees her but because she hears her. She hears the flap of her small wings, hears her heavy steps when she lands on the trail and approaches, hears the soft rumble in her throat as a greeting.

Kayin barks out a greeting to her, and Valeria returns it with a soft call.

Zoe picks at her nails. She hesitates to face Valeria. She doesn’t know what else might be there, standing at the fork in the road, at the start of the dirt path headed into the forest. But she turns. Eventually. Her shoes scrape against the path as she moves. She picks at her nails, picks and picks, nails making _click click_ sounds as she picks. It takes a long time for her to look up from the ground.

Valeria tilts her head at her. Her eyes are big and brown and sad.

Zoe looks from her to the trees. “How… How is everything?”

Valeria’s antennae droop, sadly and nervously. She grumbles quietly and with concern. She shifts her wings. The breeze stirs.

“I… Um…” She looks at her hands again. Picks, picks, _click_ , _click_. “I doubt you know about what happened at the tower? The Burned Tower, I mean.” Not the Radio Tower.

Valeria shakes her head. Kayin steps up to Zoe and presses his forehead to her hip. It helps, but not enough to keep her from picking at her nails.

“It fell. Earlier. And, um… This…” She pauses. Takes a deep breath. “One of the workers died.”

The Dragonite perks up. She makes a soft sound. A concerned one. A sad one.

“And… Um…” She picks and picks, but she looks up. She dares to glance at the trees. She shouldn’t have come here. “I mean, I didn’t… know him but…”

Her throat feels tight. She takes another deep breath.

The breeze stirs again and suddenly there’s Ashton amidst the trees, and Lilith and Cyrus, and her Magneton Eve is there as well. But Damien is missing. She dares to look past the others in search of him, in search of bright red scales but he’s not here.

It’s like her heart stops beating. Like it plummets into some pit in her chest. But Valeria grumbles something that she knows is meant to be reassuring, and Kayin yips happily toward the trees, and she tries to accept it, tries and fails to, tries at least not to think about it—she can manage that better.

She squeezes her eyes shut. Forces a smile on her face. She thinks of the tower just a few steps away. Thinks of how tall it is. Thinks of Ho-Oh resting atop it one day and leaving behind something only a Ho-Oh can.

She bites her lips. She opens her eyes.

Ashton looks back at her, not as a Cyndaquil or as a Quilava, but as a Typhlosion. The flames around his neck are quiet and cool, like the rest of them.

She thinks of Ned. She thinks of what his funeral will be like, of how his family will be, of his body being cremated, and she thinks of Ho-Oh again. She thinks of the sunrise and the sunset, of the tower looming over them right now, the one that’s supposed to bring life but somehow stands among so much death—she thinks of Ned, of that angry boy, of that girl she knew as a child. She thinks of the old man in Mahogany and of all the others she’s met. She thinks of Terry and his trainer, of that Girafarig and _her_ trainer, and she thinks of Morty. She thinks of Morty and all his ghosts, visible and invisible, and she stumbles over her feet and chokes on a laugh and she bumps into Valeria and waves her and the rest back into the forest.

She thinks to tell them something, to explain, to say, _I just don’t like funerals_. But she can’t speak past the sob in her throat.

Through the canopy, she can see the eaves of the Bell Tower. She hopes it never falls.


	5. Chapter 5

Zoe’s second return to Ecruteak two years ago wasn’t as nerve-wracking as the first. She didn’t expect that to be the case when she left the city for her fifth and sixth gym badges—because Morty really was no match for Zoe and Cyrus, who quickly evolved into a Golbat. Morty dropped a Fog Badge in her hand with a wide, proud smile on his face. It was a smile she rarely saw. “I think I trained you too well,” he told her. He pulled her in for a hug and added, “Congrats.”

She left the next morning, four badges in her bag, four Pokémon on her belt: Ashton, Geoff, Lilith, and Cyrus. Tony was home now, sitting in her mother’s garden. He was still absentminded, always staring off at something and paying attention to nothing. But her mother didn’t mind. “He’s a thinker,” she insisted, watching Tony watch a Pidgey that had landed near a tamato sapling. It was a small bird, probably freshly hatched if its short hops and inattentiveness to Tony were anything to go by. It hopped and hopped, a hop to close to the sapling and Tony, and he lashed out with a Vine Whip to scare it off.

“He’s good at keeping the pests away,” her mother told her.

Kayin didn’t mind him either. Kayin would sit in the garden beside him. He didn’t need another playmate (already had one in Zuki’s Umbreon), so Tony’s silence and distractedness was welcome. The arrangement worked. And maybe, Zoe liked to think, Tony’s quiet presence helped Kayin remain distracted from her absence.

“I’ll be back soon enough,” she told Kayin, taking his smooth, dark face in her hands and running her thumbs along his snout. “Just two badges this time. Not three.”

His ears and tail still drooped, but he leaned into her touch and made that sound like a purr at the back of his mouth.

Her parents never called with the news that he waited by the door for her. It relieved her. It made it easier to be away from home.

She expected she would be fine with her Pokémon for the next two gyms. Ashton could handle Jasmine, and Lilith and Cyrus would’ve been more than enough for Chuck. She didn’t need any new Pokémon, didn’t think she’d need any, didn’t think she’d catch any—but then she came across Eve and Damien.

And what unusual additions they were to her team, a feisty little Magnemite with an uncertain spot on the team until Pryce, and a bright red blood red Gyarados who was fond of belly rubs. Sometimes Zoe thought (but doesn’t think so anymore, won’t think anything so disrespectful of them) that they should’ve had each other’s personality.

After all, what Steel-type approaches fire with the confidence of a Water-type? Oh, just Eve, Zoe would answer. Just Eve, just a tiny little Magnemite with a bad habit of sparking and a bad habit of chasing. And Zoe never did figure out exactly what sent the Steel-type flying after them—if maybe it was Ashton’s presence at her side after they stopped for lunch, if maybe the Magnemite just felt threatened and had to speak up for herself the same way Growlithe pups yap too much while they’re still small.

If that was the case with Eve, given the way she stayed hot on Ashton’s heels, hot on his flames, buzzing, sparking, screeching—well, Zoe knew she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to catch a Pokémon so willing to fight.

Which, in the short term, turned out to be a less than optimal decision. For days, Eve often did little more than pester the others with high-pitched whirs and sparks. Ashton bared flames and fangs at her, and Cyrus hissed and screeched and resorted to Confuse Rays on occasion. Geoff, at least, had little to fear about her and generally ignored her.

But Lilith.

Lilith actually got along with her. Maybe it was just the way their general grumpiness and independence somehow meshed, or maybe it was something else that attracted the two of them, but regardless of what it was, they made an excellent team. Not necessarily outside of battle, no, Zoe wouldn’t say that, because the two liked to team up and annoy the others on occasion—harmless shocks and psychic annoyances and too many things that set the Magnemite and Drowzee pair snickering, that got Ashton and Geoff and Cyrus growling and grunting and hissing, that got Zoe gritting her teeth and pulling out a pair of Great Balls to call the two pranksters back.

In battle, though, they were a surprisingly harmonious pair, working in tandem to stun and weaken and defeat. Each of the sailors they came across on their way to Olivine City experienced that much. Especially the one who witnessed Lilith’s evolution, though he would never admit how badly a Magnemite and a Drowzee-turned-Hypno defeated him.

Despite the duo’s success along Route 37, they didn’t factor into the battle against Jasmine. No, the job of winning the Mineral Badge was assigned to Ashton and Geoff, who earned their victory handily, as was expected. After all, how could any Magnemite survive an Earthquake from a Geodude, much less from one that evolved into a Graveler mid-fight? How could a Steelix with no mastery over earth withstand fire? It was easy, too easy, so easy that Zoe began wondering if Morty _had_ trained her too well.

With Jasmine defeated, their concerns laid across the sea, past the swirls of the Whirl Islands on tiny, sandy Cianwood just a boat ride away.

“The trip ‘s just a few hours, miss,” said one of the men onboard. “Short trip, safe trip, an’ the sea ain’t too rough today.” And it wasn’t.

But something else was.

The boat was small and felt the rock of the waves, seesawing in the ocean’s embrace as something swam too close to the hull, feeling threatened or irritated by some other means. The passengers on the deck held tight to the rails, some ducking and staying as close to the floor as possible, others daring to lean over to look at the creature that stirred the sea.

It was a Gyarados. Which normally wouldn’t have been a strange sight to see (though still a frightening and unfavorable one), but this one was red. This one was the subject of passengers’ pictures as they pulled out cameras and phones, or even the target of a few trainers as they pulled out Poké Balls to catch it.

Of course, Zoe was one of those trainers, with an Ultra Ball in hand and a Hypno and Golbat at her side.

Gyarados are massive creatures, with a temperament to match. No one can dispute that. No one _could_ dispute that at the time, with the way the boat rocked and tipped. But for all their size and strength, Gyarados aren’t and weren’t much better than a Pidgey when it came to Confuse Rays. They aren’t and weren’t beneath the annoyances of the common bat. And with Lilith beside her to block off the Poké Balls of other trainers with Confusions and glares, Zoe eventually caught the Gyarados. She decided on his name, Damien, just as Cyrus returned to the boat and as Lilith dropped the Ultra Ball in her hand. She didn’t let him out until they landed, until she could find an empty part of Cianwood’s beach to safely do so, for fear that he would screech and thrash and fight.

He didn’t, though. He scowled and glared, but after introductions and an offering of Remoraid for dinner, Zoe was happy to find that he wasn’t very threatening at all. Large as he was, it was hard to find a Gyarados terrifying when he laid on the sand belly-up for belly rubs. He never became the easiest member of her team to train, given his size, but that didn’t matter for their battle against Chuck, not when Lilith figured out how to fire Psybeams and managed to put Chuck’s Primeape and Poliwrath out of commission without any help. (Eve was disappointed by that latter fact.)

The Glacier Badge was next on their list, all the way in Mahogany Town east of Ecruteak, mandating a second visit home that, this time, Zoe didn’t dread. It was a short trip back—a boat ride, a night in Olivine, then travelling on foot without any trainer battles that led to another evolution. Which was a bit unfortunate, seeing how Ashton was still a Quilava and Cyrus was still a Golbat. Eve was still a Magnemite, too, but she hadn’t been around as long. Besides, even as a Magnemite, Eve was fairly strong. And she was cute, something she would lose as a Magneton. So Zoe didn’t mind waiting on her evolution for a bit longer.

“She’ll evolve soon enough,” Morty told her once they were in Ecruteak and on the trail headed to the Bell Tower. “She’s overflowing with energy. She keeps sparking.” And as if on cue, Eve buzzed and sparked and made some high-pitched screech to show her agreement. She floated over and around Morty, stopping to hover by Zoe’s side like she wanted to say, _He knows what he’s talking about, I like him_.

“I know,” Zoe answered. She poked one of Eve’s magnets and turned the Magnemite around. She buzzed angrily, but Zoe just laughed. “It doesn’t help the way she keeps electrocuting everyone.” 

“You’re not planning on keeping her from evolving, are you?” 

“No,” she said, trying her hardest to ignore his melancholic tone. They passed the fork in the road. She looked into the trees, and she looked at Morty. He was staring ahead, toward the tower. The way spots of sunlight hit him, his eyes were cast in shadow. She frowned. It was like the day was too aware of itself. “It’s not like I even own an Everstone anyway.” 

“Right.” He reached up to stroke Eve’s side with a finger, wincing when the electricity hit him. And she buzzed in acknowledgement, unsurprised and unapologetic, but he wasn’t offended. He stroked her magnet instead. “You know how I feel about unevolved Pokémon.”

Zoe nodded. An unevolved Pokémon is not a safe Pokémon. He had told her that more than once. She frowned. Eleven slabs of stone, if she remembered correctly, and somehow she thought of Geoff. 

She looked to Morty. He could help her evolve him. Would trade for him in a heartbeat if she asked for that reason. 

But they arrived at the doorstep of the Bell Tower before she could open her mouth to ask. She looked up. She could only see the eaves of one of its roofs through the canopy. 

Coming here, for the reason they were here now, was a yearly tradition, one that haunted them both with different things and for different reasons. She herself felt haunted by the inability to understand Morty’s situation or to empathize with him. She wasn’t a gym leader after all. She hadn’t fought nearly as many trainers as Morty had in his lifetime. But for the trainers and wild Pokémon that she _had_ fought, not one of those battles had gotten out of hand; Morty was very careful to teach her restraint during their years of training. So she couldn’t understand. She couldn’t understand like she _knew_ , because she didn’t. It hadn’t happened to her. But she could sympathize, in this strangely hollow way that made her feel like she couldn’t really help, like a child who didn’t know what to do while her parent suffered from stress or grief. 

But she wasn’t aware (and still isn’t aware) that Morty was, is, and will be a haunted man, haunted not just by his guilt and his past actions but by his very city. By his profession. By his power. 

And maybe if she had looked closer, if she had really seen the heaviness in his steps, had heard the deeper groan of the wood beneath his feet, if she had noticed how low his bow was when they greeted the sage at the door—maybe then she would have realized it. If she had noticed how slowly he walked toward the candles at the back, or if she had heard the quietness of his voice, maybe then she could have acknowledged it. Maybe then, she could have understood even without knowing. 

But she didn’t. So she didn’t see a remorseful man. She saw a man who was paying his dues. A man who knew right from wrong who always corrected his mistakes. She saw someone who was honorable and proud, but she never knew he never felt that way. 

He lit eleven candles. He shut his eyes for each, murmuring prayers that consisted of hopes and wishes that Zoe couldn’t understand. He always prayed when they came here, always whispered as the wick of each candle caught fire, always shut his eyes after each one burned peacefully, always ended his prayer seconds afterward. Eleven candles, eleven flames, eleven prayers. 

She didn’t know the names of all eleven. She only knew the names of two: Aimi, and Terry. 

She didn’t know and never knew what to do when he finished his words, whispered to some entity that she didn’t know and couldn’t name. Many people prayed to Ho-Oh to give the souls of their lost ones happiness, or to Lugia to let them rest, or to Celebi that they would meet some day in the afterlife. But not one of those legends ever appeared when someone passed away. Not one of them appeared to guide spirits from this world into the next. They did nothing but stand as symbols, did nothing but represent hope and peace for the ones still alive. Morty knew that. So she didn’t think he prayed to them. 

Then again, it wasn’t like she knew how guilty he felt. 

Eve hovered close to the candles, daring to feel their warmth against her body. But she sparked suddenly, and one of the flames near her flared too large for Morty’s liking. He pulled her back by a magnet and looked to Zoe. He didn’t have to speak for her to get the message. She called Eve back into her Great Ball. 

“The fewer, the better,” he muttered, and she didn’t know what to make of that. The fewer around to watch? The fewer candles to light? She didn’t ask, but he seemed to know that she was wondering. Though his, “It’s more comfortable that way,” didn’t explain much. 

He watched the candles. She took a deep breath and watched them with him. “I’m sorry,” she said, like she always did when they came here. 

He never said anything in reply. 

 

”You’re off to Mahogany, right?” He stretched his arms overhead. She thought he looked like one of the trees on the trail, but like a withered one, with the tiredness of his voice and the darkness of his clothes. He smiled at her when he looked to her, but there was something forced and hollow about it. 

“Yeah,” she answered, and while she didn’t think battles were an appropriate topic considering the building they had left, she continued the conversation nonetheless. It seemed to be easy enough for Morty to talk about. “I think Ashton and Eve will be enough for Pryce.”

“Really? I thought that shiny Gyarados of yours would be a better fit.” 

She smiles. “For his Piloswine, yeah. But I’m especially counting on Eve for this one. After Lilith beat Chuck, she’s been dying to steal the show in a big battle.” 

He laughs softly. “Fair enough. And Clair?” 

She hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. She shrugged, never noticing the way it made Morty nervous. “Not sure yet. Damien’s got Ice Fang, so right now, I think he’s my best bet. But that’s so far in the future.” She looks up at him and grins. “Besides, I’d like to try my hand at catching a Dratini first.” 

Morty raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. “In the Den? Clair won’t let you back there. You’re no Dragon Tamer.” 

She shrugged. “Maybe just in Blackthorn? I’ve heard you can find them in some lake near the Den.” 

“Well, good luck with that,” he scoffed, and she smiled and rolled her eyes at his lack of faith. 

She didn’t end up catching a Dratini in Blackthorn. No, after Eve evolved and soundly defeated Pryce with Lilith and Zoe found herself in the city of dragons, she quickly learned there wasn’t any hope of catching a Dratini in the city lake. So the badge, her eighth and final one, became a priority, one that Damien did make easy to obtain. Clair (begrudgingly) gave her access to the Dragon’s Den afterward, a humid, dreary, and surprisingly impressive cave that sprawled beneath Blackthorn City. It was open and dim, but it was easy to see the stalactites that reached down like the claws of a Dragonite.

It suited the atmosphere of course, with the Dragon’s Den only accessible to dragon trainers and, apparently, a select few others. Though it didn’t quite suit the personality of the Dratini that Zoe hooked, curious serpent that she was. The Dratini liked her almost instantly, poking at her and her bags in much the same way that Tony had all those months ago. Zoe caught her easily, and after a few battles with the Dratini on their way home to Ecruteak, Zoe decided the name Valeria would suit her.

So, no, Zoe technically didn’t catch a Dratini in Blackthorn City. Technically, she didn’t catch a Dragonair either, but Morty didn’t have to know that. She came back to Ecruteak with a then-Dragonair slithering quietly beside her, and when Morty asked where exactly she had caught Valeria, she just grinned. She let him come to his own conclusions.


	6. Chapter 6

The Burned Tower collapsed three days ago. Ned died three days ago. Today is his funeral, and Zoe isn’t attending. 

She feels bad for that. But, she tries to remind herself, it’s not like she knew him. How many times had she felt the need to attend the funerals of people she first met as spirits? Several times, a long time ago. Before she got used to it. Before she realized she couldn’t attend so many funerals, before she realized she didn’t owe it to them to attend their funerals. She did enough just speaking to them, explaining things to them, helping them move on—though she did a poor job of that with Ned. Maybe that’s why she feels she should attend his funeral. To make up for her behavior. 

But she’s not going to his funeral. She doesn’t feel like she belongs there anyway, and there’s somewhere else she wants to be. At Zuki’s home, seated with her in the tea house out in the garden.

It’s a small tea house, like any other, maybe smaller than a studio apartment in Goldenrod City. The table at the center of the main room can hardly fit more than four people before everyone starts squirming in want of elbow space. Once, Zoe and Zuki had tried to host a tea party there, with all of Zuki’s sisters present. Eight young women packed around a coffee table that could only seat four. There were complaints and grumbles and threats to spill hot tea over everyone if they didn’t make space—threats to up and leave and walk beyond the open doors and into the garden. No one followed through on those threats, but hardly anyone stopped voicing them either.

As annoyed and annoying as they all were that one day, it’s a nice memory for Zoe to think back on. That must’ve happened six years ago, not long after Kayin had evolved into an Umbreon. He was supposed to be there the day of that tea party, along with all of the Kimono Sisters’ Pokémon, but it would’ve been impossible to fit four Eeveelutions and two Eevee along with the eight of them. Zoe figures that if the Pokémon were there, they must have played out in the garden. She can’t remember for certain, even sitting now in the same spot as she was that day and looking out into the garden through the open doors. She squints and tilts her head and peers through the rays of sunlight coming in, like that will help her remember. But she can’t remember, so she assumes the Pokémon had stayed outside.

She could ask Zuki for an answer if she wanted. She’s sitting right beside her, also in the same spot as six years ago, but this time digging through a pouch full of nail polish instead of frowning into a steaming cup of tea. She pulls out tiny bottle after tiny bottle, blues and purples and greens and yellows. She’s probably not thinking about that tea party six years ago. She’s also probably not thinking about the adorably funny face she makes when she’s trying to figure out color palettes—for nail polish or makeup or arrangements or whatever else.

Zoe smiles. She could say something. Maybe. But it’s safer to just wonder about where the Pokémon had gone that day.

She can’t remember where they were _that_ day, but she remembers where they were when she finally came home, after she had her eight badges but hadn’t made up her mind about challenging the Elite Four. It must’ve been Eusine who really pushed for it—for her to challenge them and eventually take on Lance and walk away with the title of Champion. It had to be Eusine, because everyone else knew that wasn’t a goal she’d had in mind when she started, and he was always out of touch and always too enthusiastic and always had a little too much faith in her as a trainer. Not that she or anyone else would have noticed the latter until two months ago but…

Zuki drops a bottle of orange polish on the table, and Zoe flinches. Zuki doesn’t notice, though. She still has her face turned toward her array of nail polish when she says, “We’re not doing orange. You always paint your nails orange.”

“It’s my favorite color,” Zoe mutters.

Zuki smiles at her. “I know.”

And Zoe stares. For maybe a fraction of a second too long, because Zuki’s smile turns a little bashful, and she looks back to the pouch in this hesitant way that makes Zoe’s heart pound with nervousness and nostalgia.

Zuki had smiled at her like that before, on the night after she was finally home, when she couldn’t make up her mind about training for a championship or just staying put in Ecruteak. Zuki had smiled at her like that, when she had looked at her case of badges. She had picked up the Rising Badge between her fingers and looked out at Zoe’s team and then looked at her and said, “You’re such a marvelous trainer, Zoe.”

Zoe wasn’t sure what had prompted that. She still isn’t sure. Because it’s not like getting eight badges is that rare a feat. Difficult, yes, and not the kind of thing that just anyone can do. But she didn’t and doesn’t think that was worth a compliment spoken like _that_. Not so softly. Not so reverently.

It had to have been something else, something aside from all her badges. Her team, maybe. Maybe they were doing something impressive, running around in the garden as they were that night. But what amazing thing could her Pokémon have been doing at the time? Certainly not battling. Kayin might have been play-fighting with her Pokémon—with Ashton, maybe, because even as a Typhlosion, he wasn’t so big that Kayin couldn’t keep up with him. And that must’ve been cute, an Umbreon and a Typhlosion on all fours, rolling around in the grass like pups, panting happily and letting their tongues hang out of their mouths—but that’s not impressive.

Maybe Zuki was watching Eve. Eve would’ve been floating around Lilith, buzzing quietly at her, and the Hypno would’ve replied with quiet grunts or stifled snickers. They might have been eyeing some of Zoe’s other Pokémon, planning to sneak up on them and play some sort of prank. Probably against Cyrus. The Golbat was their favorite to pester, as easy to irritate as he was—though he had arguably developed a sixth sense about the thing. About their pranks and plans. He would turn an angry eye on them and hiss if they seemed suspicious, and the two would laugh (as well as a Hypno and a Magneton could) and go back to their quiet conversation. Cyrus would’ve hissed at them that one night, if the two really were plotting something.

But if they weren’t, there wouldn’t have been anything secretive or otherwise off about the pair that would’ve drawn Zuki’s attention. If they weren’t, Cyrus wouldn’t have made a sound to alert anyone to any mischief. He would’ve left, would’ve gone for a flight in the night air, to stretch his wings and take in the moonlight. He would’ve left Geoff all alone, sitting somewhere near Zoe like he always does. Geoff was probably so close to her that Zuki couldn’t have seen him, despite his size as a Graveler.

That left Valeria, a Dragonair who wouldn’t be a Dragonite for a few more weeks. She was still too new to the team—still too quiet and still too nervous—to feel comfortable enough to linger by the sides of Zoe’s other Pokémon. She might have been in the pond, the one she would later swim and slither through with Kuni’s Vaporeon whenever the two had the chance. She might have been just beneath the surface of the dark water, just out of everyone’s sight. Zuki wouldn’t have been watching her.

And she certainly wasn’t watching Damien. He was curled up in his Ultra Ball; this garden can’t hold a Gyarados, and Zoe doubts there’s any garden in the world that can.

A bottle of nail polish hits the table again. Zoe hears Zuki unscrew it and say, “Alright, give me your hand.”

Zoe looks over. She’s chosen navy, and Zoe almost frowns. It’s a dark color. Too dark. But it reminds her of Zuki’s kimono, and then of Zuki’s dancing. And when she thinks of that, she furrows her brow and purses her lips in this strangely embarrassed way, and all she can think to do after is to look at the garden and blindly give Zuki her hand, trying very, very hard to focus on whatever is outside.

She stares at the trees, at the grass, at the sunlight, and tries very, very hard not to think about how soft Zuki’s hands are. She keeps her eyes fixed on a knot in the trunk of a tree and tries to come up with some memory for that tree, just to have something to think about. Maybe she had climbed it once, or maybe her Pokémon had chased each other around it, or maybe she had stood there once or twice talking to Zuki—

And then there’s the thought that Zuki had called her a marvelous trainer not because of her team, but because of _her._ And she lets herself indulge in the thought.

She smiles.

They’re quiet for a while. Long enough that Zuki has almost finished one of her hands. Long enough that Zoe can watch the garden—can watch the trees sway in the breeze, can hear the rustling of the leaves and the grass—without feeling nervous anymore.

Zuki hardly breaks the silence when she speaks. Her voice is quiet, and as warm as the sunlight. She asks, “Are you feeling better?” and Zoe’s immediate thought is to say, _Yes_.

But she thinks about it. She straightens in her seat. She turns toward Zuki, but she doesn’t look her in the eye. She watches Zuki dip the brush in the polish, watches her paint the last bare nail on her hand, and she thinks.

She reminds herself that today is Ned’s funeral. And it seems like a foreign thought to her, like something far away. Like “Ned” is just a name and not a person, nor the spirit of a person she met just three days ago. She frowns. It’s strange to think about. It’s strange to think that Ned—Ned the person and not Ned the spirit—is dead. Strange to think that his body is lying in a coffin, or that maybe he’s already been cremated and is now sitting in an urn. Strange to think that whatever’s left of him is now in the ground or still set out before the people who knew him. Strange to think of his bones and ashes set out before Morty.

“I’m not sure,” Zoe mutters, and she thinks about another time. About another man. Another spirit. She thinks of the old man who vanished over the Lake of Rage, the one she thought of when she first saw Ned’s ghost. But she mostly thinks of the sunset that day. Of how orange the sky looked. Of how peaceful the lake seemed, beneath that sky… amid those trees.

And then she thinks of the forest just off the Bellchime Trail. She thinks of Goldenrod City. She thinks of the roof of the Radio Tower, of the city glowing in the afternoon sun, of the metal curling over the observatory deck like claws, of the red R on that glowing white suit and that head of powder blue hair and—

She takes a deep breath. Holds it. Shuts her eyes. Lets it out. She’s about to say again that she doesn’t know, but Zuki speaks first. “Sorry,” she says, “I just wanted to… I was just… hoping you were doing okay.”

Zuki isn’t painting her nails anymore. When Zoe opens her eyes, she sees that the brush has been left in the bottle, that five of her nails are glistening and dark, and that Zuki is looking at her with a concerned and apologetic expression. And Zoe can’t help it. She puts on a smile. She shakes her head. “No, it’s fine,” she says. “ _I’m_ fine, it’s just…”

But she shrugs. She licks her lips. She looks away. She feels like picking at her nails, but one of her hands is practically in Zuki’s hold (and something in her chest jumps when she notices), and if she started picking at her nails anyway, Zuki would call her out on it. Not that she’s a good liar to begin with but… “It’s hard not to… think about it when it felt like it was happening all over again…”

“I know,” Zuki says, and she puts her hand on Zoe’s wrist. She tugs, just enough to get Zoe to look at her again. “But I’m here. Okay? If you need to talk about it again or cry or… whatever. I’m here.”

Zoe smiles. Honestly, this time. Eyes stinging like she might take Zuki up on that offer right now. “I know.”

Zuki smiles back and squeezes her wrist and goes back to painting her nails. “You don’t have to put up a brave front, you know,” Zuki reminds her. Her eyes look up at Zoe with an amused little smile. “You’re not a good liar.”

Zoe breathes out a laugh. She knows.

* * *

The sun is still high in the sky by the time her nails are done. Dark blue with just a hint of glitter that too easily reminds Zoe of the night sky. The two of them sit on the edge of the tea house, bare feet on the grass and legs in the sun. For a while, they talk: about the new restaurant that opened up, about the wedding dress show Zoe likes so much, about the Pokéathlon competitions that will be starting soon. They talk for what seems like hours, and they sit in silence afterward, listening only to the breeze. Mostly what Zoe thinks about in that silence is how much she’d like to forget—about all the towers and all the forests and all the graves. But she also thinks about how cowardly that is. About how cowardly it is that she’s avoiding Ned’s funeral right now, and beyond that, how cowardly it is that she’s avoided the forest for all this time.

She could try to go there again. To the forest. But her muscles tense at the thought, and it’d be easier to start somewhere smaller anyway.

“I think…” she starts, and she pauses and breathes and thinks before she speaks again. “I think I’m gonna try to make the funeral.”

It takes Zuki a second to ask, “That worker’s funeral?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re sure?”

She pauses. Thinks. Nods.

She gets up and hugs Zoe goodbye, and she doesn’t really think about where she goes after that. Morty had texted her the time and place of the funeral once the details were decided, in case she chose to go. But she doesn’t remember the details, and she doesn’t pull out her Pokégear to check. She just walks, wherever her feet carry her, just walks and walks, keeps walking even after she realizes the path she’s taking will lead her to the gym.

She might have deleted the text in a fit. She might have. She could check, but that would be a waste of time, even if it only took a few seconds. Besides, Morty probably wrote the information down and left it on his desk in the gym. That’s why she’s going there, really. To see if he wrote it down. In case what he sent her was wrong or in case she deleted the text because it wasn’t worth the few seconds of time to check. She’s trying to _save_ herself some time, not buy herself some. She’s not trying to find an excuse.

But it’s strange. It’s really strange. To walk to the gym with a knot in her stomach and the hope in her head that the place is empty—as it should be. It’s strange to hope that she’ll be able to sit in the back room by herself and just stay there. Just stare at the walls. Just hug her knees and wonder what happened to that sudden resolve to not be a coward.

She scowls at the sidewalk and grits her teeth and refuses to acknowledge the sting in her eyes. She wonders when she got so weak, but she already knows the answer to that.

She fishes out the keys to the gym from her dress pocket, fingers brushing against Kayin and Geoff’s Poké Balls as she does so. She keeps her eyes on the sidewalk, right on her shoes, right on a pair of old dark flats that she’s surprised she hasn’t replaced yet. The surprise reminds her of the pair she wore on that day two months ago. She had thrown those out. Immediately.

She huffs. She shakes her head, like that would make her stop thinking of the day, and she looks up and she blinks and she tries to focus on what she can see _right now_ instead of what she can see in her head. And when she does, she stops. She stops walking, she stops breathing, she stops thinking but she keeps remembering.

There’s a young woman at the door to the gym with dark navy hair, just like her nails, and just like she remembers it. She remembers that Girafarig again. Remembers the gym battle, remembers the Radio Tower. Remembers Archer.

Remembers her name.

She turns to Zoe and looks at her, and it’s clear that she remembers her too.


	7. Chapter 7

When Zoe first met her, she could only describe Kris as proud and overconfident. Zoe would use different words now, though. She’d still say Kris is confident, but she would also say that she’s strong and brave and that just about any other heroic descriptor suits her. But when they met four months ago, Zoe could only say she was one of those eighteen-year-old trainers who thought they knew everything about battling after easily getting a few badges.

She met Kris at the door to the gym. Morty wasn’t in yet, the door was locked, it was storming, and Zoe couldn’t just leave the poor girl out there.

When she answered the door, Kris had her jacket pulled over her head and asked, “Uh, is Morty in?”

Her jacket had done little to keep the rain off her. Her hair was black with water rather than navy, sticking to her forehead and neck and shoulders, and her shirt and shorts were soaked and dark. Zoe’s first thought was to question why she didn’t have an umbrella, but she thought better of it. She instead opened the door wider and stepped aside to let her in. “No, but he should be here soon. You can wait here if you’d like.” Zoe smiled and shrugged. “I have tea in the back.”

“Thank you,” Kris sighed. She hurried in and held her sopping jacket away herself once she was safe from the rain, like she couldn’t let the jacket drip any more water on her. She scowled at it—at the jacket or at the water it held—and muttered, “Of course it pours the one day I don’t have an umbrella.” 

Well, that answered her earlier question.

“So, Morty won’t be long?” Kris asked. She hung her jacket over her arm and gave Zoe a sheepish smile that didn’t look quite right on her face. It seemed too modest for her, somehow, though it didn’t seem false. “Sorry in advance for tracking water everywhere.”

Zoe ignored the odd smile and started walking to the back room, where her cup of tea sat waiting for her on the table. “It’s not a problem,” she said. And it wasn’t, but the instant the girl started following her, the sound of squeaking shoes filled the gym like a loud, grating reminder for her to mop up as soon as she could. “He’ll be here in twenty minutes or so."

“Oh, cool. The sooner I can get this over with, the better, you know?” She grinned, and then held out a hand. “I’m Kris, by the way. Short for Kristen.”

“Zoe,” she said, shaking her hand and peering at her curiously. She had her suspicions, but Kris didn’t sound nervous, and she certainly didn’t look nervous. She had a glint in her blue eyes that made her seem determined and confident, but it didn’t stop Zoe from saying, “You know, if you’re nervous about your battle, I can give you some advice if you—”

But Kris scoffed. “Nah, I’m not nervous. Not exactly my first time taking on a gym challenge.”

Maybe she seemed too confident, and Zoe couldn’t help but wonder if was just for show.

She didn’t say anything, though. Instead, she muttered, “Ah,” and thought back to all the other gym challenges she had witnessed here. Mostly she thought of the ones where the challenger had lost and wondered if Kris’ challenge would end the same way. “Which badge would this one be, then? Your fourth?”

“Fifth,” she answered proudly. “I detoured to Mahogany to catch a Girafarig for this battle. Figured I’d take on Pryce before I came back. That was… Mm, maybe two weeks ago?”

Zoe frowned, suspiciously and worriedly, probably in the same way that Morty frowned whenever he battled against Pokémon with Everstones around their necks. “That’s a pretty recent catch, huh… Are you sure that’s—”

But Kris interrupted her again, waving her cautiousness away. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve gotten a lot of training in with Dalia.” She smiled, with so much genuine confidence that it worried Zoe. “She’s ready to take on Morty.”

She wasn’t.

Kris wasted no time in challenging Morty when he finally arrived at the gym. “I’m planning on winning, though,” she told him. And she didn’t lie. She _was_ planning on winning, and she _did_ win and claim the Fog Badge. Her Feraligatr did an excellent job handling the Pokémon that followed, after all. But she didn’t win in the way she had expected, and Zoe wasn’t sure what to feel for her.

She felt sorrow, of course, but there was something normal about Dalia’s death. Not normal as though it had happened many times before—though it had, a total of nine times by then, but Zoe had never witnessed any of those deaths, not even Terry’s—but normal in a different way. And Zoe wasn’t sure how to describe it, wasn’t sure how to name it, just knew that it had something to do with the way Dalia’s soul sprang out of her body after being literally scared to death. Maybe it was just the sheer strength of Morty’s Pokémon, or the simple fact that Dalia’s heart was just too frail and she was just too young and fight-or-flight simply became freeze.

Morty saw Dalia’s soul just as she did. Saw her get up and prance around like she was still in the fight, still scratching her hooves against the floor, legs and knees still shaking, head and tail still looking back at Kris with the vain hope of being called back to her Level Ball.

But then Dalia caught sight of her body, still and without her.

She walked up to it slowly, sniffed at it, toed it, jumped when she realized she couldn’t touch it, and leaped in a frenzy until she looked at Morty and at Zoe and finally at Kris who couldn’t see her—and she accepted it.

But Kris, Kris couldn’t accept it as easily or as quickly. She stared, standing as still as the corpse on the field, eyes never leaving Dalia’s body despite the fact that Dalia was right in front of her now, right in her face, trying to touch her and call out to her.

And Morty… Well, Zoe couldn’t look at Morty.

With Kris’ permission (the hastiest and most conflicted, “Yeah, sure,” Zoe had ever heard), Morty had Dalia cremated and buried, alongside the others, all taken care of in three days’ time.

But Kris was gone the morning after her battle. She didn’t come back until today, now that Zoe sees her standing outside the locked doors to the gym again. She didn’t turn up in Zoe’s life until… until Goldenrod City. Until the Radio Tower. And somehow, the flash of sunlight against her dark hair when Kris opens her mouth to greet her—somehow it makes her hair brighter than it is, shorter than it is. Somehow it’s cropped and powder blue and Zoe chokes on her breath when she remembers just how much she owes Kris. When she remembers Archer again.


	8. Chapter 8

She was sitting on the couch with Zuki that morning two months ago. They were talking about something, nothing all that important, but Zoe remembers smiles. She remembers her own smiles and Zuki’s smiles as they talked about trivial things, which she later would and now does find unfair—but at the time, there was nothing wrong and nothing ominous about the two of them sitting on the couch, turned toward each other and sitting more closely than usual. And there was nothing wrong or ominous about Sakura suddenly bounding into the living room shouting, “We’re going to the Radio Tower!”

Zoe and Zuki looked over the back of the couch to see the younger twins standing there, Sakura with a wide grin on her face and Sumomo with a small smile and her Eevee—she’ll be a Glaceon soon enough—in her arms. “Kuni’s taking us,” Sumomo supplied, looking Zoe in the eye. “Do you wanna come with us? Everyone else is gonna be busy later.”

Zoe glanced at Zuki, who shrugged and muttered something about practice.

So Zoe shrugged as well and turned to the younger twins and said, “Sure. It’s been a long while since I’ve been to Goldenrod anyway.” The Plain Badge sitting somewhere in her room would say it had been two years.

“Awesome!” Sakura cheered, and she bounced on her toes and said something about telling Kuni before running off.

Sumomo followed her, but not before saying that her twin was too energetic, that her enthusiasm might get the better of her one day.

The four of them left about an hour later, Kuni with her Vaporeon, the younger twins with their two Eevee, and Zoe with the Pokémon she had on hand: Ashton, Lilith, Cyrus, Eve, Damien, and Kayin. Zuki left for the theater just as they did. She didn’t leave without hugging them each goodbye.

They took a train to Goldenrod, because it wasn’t like Naoko’s Espeon could Teleport them there, it wasn’t like Lilith could Teleport them there (and even if she could, Zoe didn’t trust the Hypno with her poor accuracy), and it wasn’t like Valeria could fly all four of them there in one trip. Even if she could, Zoe couldn’t bring herself to tear Valeria away from the Bellchime Trail that the Dragonite liked so much and found so peaceful. Zoe didn’t think anything of leaving her behind, didn’t think anything of leaving Geoff at home, didn’t think to go back home for him because they were just going to Goldenrod City, just visiting a tower, he wouldn’t be needed and neither would Valeria.

They were in Goldenrod within the half hour, stepping out onto a crowded platform and crowded streets. More than once Kuni had to yank Sakura back into her sight because the girl was prone to getting too curious and wandering too far away.

Zoe hadn’t been to the Radio Tower the last time she had visited Goldenrod City. She had only been in town for the gym, and the tower held nothing of interest to her. Even now, it held little interest to her, so she wasn’t entirely sure why the twins wanted to come so badly.

“You don’t listen to the radio, do you,” Sakura scoffed when Zoe asked.

“No, not really,” Zoe muttered, one eyebrow and one corner of her lips raised. She sounded so smug. Zoe shared a look with Sumomo, who giggled. “Why does that matter?”

“ _Because_ ,” Sakura answered, a proud and excited grin on her face, “Buena—she’s this radio host that I’m sure you don’t know.” (Zoe did in fact know her. Everyone did.) “She’s holding this contest at the radio tower and the winners get concert tickets to see Arctic Mankeys _and we need to see them_!” She bounced on her toes and turned to her twin, hoping that Sumomo would be just as excited as she was, all but jumping and screaming—but when Sumomo only offered her, Zoe, and Kuni a wide smile that crinkled her narrow eyes, Sakura deflated and pouted. “You could at least be more excited for once.”

Sumomo scowled. “I am!”

“Alright, alright,” Kuni sighed. She patted both girls’ heads, the twins each a full head shorter than she is, even at fifteen. “Let’s not get into another of these arguments, please…”

They grumbled and wordlessly agreed.

The Radio Tower, for all its height and modern marvel, didn’t strike Zoe as anything amazing. If anything, it was an eyesore, all dusty dark metal and panes of glass, an industrial bruise on the otherwise sunlight-bright streets of Goldenrod. It couldn’t hold a candle to the Bell Tower, not in height and not in appearance. No, the Bell Tower reflected light, lived in it, existed as part of it. But this tower—this one absorbed light. It swallowed the golden glow of the sun, like a black tombstone in the autumn forest that was Goldenrod City.

At the time, Zoe thought it was just a disappointing sight. Later, she would think it was an ominous one.

They purchased their visitor passes and found Buena’s studio with little trouble, but finding Buena herself—as Sakura was intent on doing so with the hopes of winning the woman’s favor—proved to be more difficult. She wasn’t in her studio, the workers didn’t seem to know where she was, and there was, eventually, the issue of the alarm.

That ringing, ringing, ringing alarm, the one accompanied by the static of the PA system and the wondering worried murmurs of certain others in the building—the others that _weren’t_ the enemy, at the very least. Because at some point, there were voices and yells, orders to get on the ground, to throw hands over their hands, to surrender Poké Balls. There was a gunshot at one point. Not Kuni or her sisters or Zoe ever learned if it met a live target or not.

What happened and what followed is a convoluted mess in all their memories: too many sounds drowning each other out, too many voices, too much static (“Giovanni, Team Rocket has returned!”), too many blurred faces, too many enemies dressed as commoners and innocent civilians.

They were held on the third floor, crammed into a room with dozens of whimpering strangers, Scyther stationed before them like knives at their throats. Hands on their heads, faces up, eyes looking at those Scyther, at the seemingly useless weapons that the infiltrators carried, at the red R’s plastered on the black shirts they wore beneath their disguises—and Sumomo had an inappropriately amused opinion on the fact that villains wore uniforms.

Zoe was acutely aware, and still is, of her own thoughts at that moment, all finely tuned on the Poké Balls that sat in her dress pockets. What a bad day it was to wear a dress, but at least today she could be a travelling trainer in clothing she liked to wear. No running through streets and forests in jeans and sneakers, no shouting orders against a twelve-year-old while she dressed like a twelve-year-old herself. It was an empowering thought, and a silly one, to think that a dress could make her feel like she could stand up and fight.

But one glance around the room, one glance at the two Hypno stationed before them, shut down such thoughts immediately. No chance to move, no chance to fight, not without getting caught by a Psychic. Not without taking those Scyther’s blades to her throat.

Still, she thought. She thought about her eight badges sitting at home, thought about how in all her months of travelling, she hadn’t found herself in a situation quite like this. She didn’t know how to deal with this or how to fight this, didn’t know how to keep Sakura’s eyes from watering, or how to keep that frighteningly blank expression off Sumomo’s face, or how to get Kuni to stop frowning so desperately and fearfully.

So she breathed. She thought. The Hypno were her big issue. Kayin could get past them without a problem, as much as she preferred he didn’t get into a battle, especially not with these people. But Kayin could walk up to them, could fight them, could defeat them. Could distract them, at least, while Ashton or Cyrus or Eve handled the Scyther. Lilith could protect them from the humans and their guns if needed, if she could aim correctly for once and snatch their weapons away.

She thought. Thought about how she’d get their Poké Balls, about how quickly they’d understand what she needed them to do, about how quickly a Hypno could catch her, how quickly a man could shoot her, how quickly a Scyther could decapitate her. She thought and frowned and shivered but her arms twitched like she would do it. Her legs twitched like she would stand, but one glance around the room, at the people cowering beside her, made her think against it. She wondered who else was thinking and twitching and second guessing herself.

But the fighter and rebel she wondered about came not from the crowd she was in, but from the staircase. In the form of a young, navy-haired woman and a tiny Murkrow that certainly wasn’t the Noctowl Zoe remembered being on Kris’ team.

The lack of the familiar owl wasn’t what really surprised Zoe, however. It was Kris’ shirt. The black one with the red R that matched all the other infiltrators’ and left her breath caught in her throat. She thought back to the young woman she met in Ecruteak, to the young, proud, overconfident trainer that she let into the gym, that battled Morty, that lost her Girafarig in an attempt to win her fifth badge.

The thought that maybe Dalia’s death pushed Kris toward Team Rocket crossed Zoe’s mind, but she had to think that it was a ridiculous thought, an illogical one, one of those knee-jerk reactions that shoot through neurons and emerge before they can rationalize themselves. What would a Girafarig’s death have to do with joining Team Rocket?

She gritted her teeth and kept a careful eye on Kris. The Murkrow on her shoulder eventually caught sight of her, caught her eye, and didn’t look away from her, not even when Kris walked up to one of the grunts to speak to him. The bird narrowed his eyes, cocked his head, opened his beak and soundlessly snapped it shut, like he was trying to mouth something to her. She furrowed her brow and wondered why he was fixated on her like he recognized her.

She looked away eventually, mostly to keep from accidentally making eye contact with the once-innocent trainer. She frowned and went back to thinking, but there was the frightening thought about what worse things might have happened if Kris lost that day—not just if she had lost the battle, but if she had lost all her Pokémon…

She squeezed her eyes shut and stopped the thought in its tracks. That was in the past anyway, it wasn’t like contemplating it would help her now, and she had to worry about how she was going to get Kayin, Lilith, and one of the others out of their Poké Balls and out of harm’s way. Her hands twitched again, like they would dig into her pockets and toss all her Poké Balls in the air—and something cracked.

Another gunshot, she thought, as she flinched and ducked, as the crowd shrieked and did the same. A shadow zipped past overhead, red flashed afterward, and all Zoe could think of was a battle.

Her hands did move to her pockets and they did close around two Poké Balls (she couldn’t tell whose, didn’t hold them or feel them long enough to be able to tell that she wasn’t holding Kayin’s in either hand), and just as she looked up, she saw that Murkrow ramming into one of the Hypno, saw a Arcanine gnawing on one of the Scyther, saw an Ampharos dealing out Thunder Waves to keep the grunts incapacitated. The gun had slid somewhere across the floor, and Kris planted a foot on top of it.

And Zoe stared. For a solid three seconds, she stared and tried to wrap her head around what was happening, tried to figure out how one of their own would turn against them, how an innocent trainer became the infiltrator and, essentially, the hero.

She didn’t snap out of it until the Murkrow swooped over her, cawed, and dove back into one of the Hypno, cloaked in shadows.

Zoe tossed the two Poké Balls in her hands and stood once Eve and Lilith appeared before her.

What followed was a blur of movements and light, screeching noises—people yelling, people running, herself getting bumped into and nearly toppled over, and once everyone had cleared out, once she looked over her shoulder and caught Kuni holding her sisters and nodded for them to leave—once those three were out and hopefully safely out of the tower, she looked to her Pokémon. “Charge Beam! Psybeam!”

The two fired their attacks, electricity clipping the wings of the Scyther, some odd ray of energy striking the other Hypno, the grunts, and the other Pokémon they threw out: Raticate, Zubat, Koffing…

And at some point, she made eye contact with Kris, still dressed like the enemy but eyes holding the warmth of recognition and alliance.

They didn’t speak to each other, not until they had defeated the grunts’ Pokémon, not until they were able to put the enemy to sleep with Lilith’s Hypnosis and ensure they were out for the count.

“You’re…” Zoe started.

“That lady from Morty’s gym.”

She paused and nodded. “Kris, right?” It was hard to forget her name. Not after witnessing her battle. Not after Dalia.

Kris nodded. “Yeah. But, I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name…?”

“Zoe.”

“Right! Right. So what are you doing here? Or, I mean, maybe…” She looked over her shoulder, then looked past Zoe to make sure no one was coming up the stairs. Her Murkrow landed on her shoulder. Zoe wondered when she had caught him, if she had had him when she battled Morty, and if she did, why she hadn’t used him. “Maybe you’d be willing to help me out?”

Zoe gave her a nervous smile. “Play the part of the hero?” Eve, Magneton that she was, floated up to them, buzzing in agreement and determination.

Zoe shrugged. Her heart pounded, but she couldn’t let Kris do this alone.

They made their way up the stairs, up the building, defeating other Rocket grunts, bashing their way through doors—even a wall, at one point, which Kris’ Donphan was more than happy to take down—making their way to the elevator that went directly to the observatory deck.

There were two of them by the elevator, a man in black with an oily grin and a woman in white with pride in her eyes. Kris knew them by name: Proton and Ariana. Zoe would only ever know them as the ones she defeated.

They were admins, from what Zoe came to understand—or at least, Ariana was—admins with poisonous bombs and bats and snakes, an Arbok and a Weezing that Lilith easily took care of, a Vileplume that Kris’ Arcanine had no trouble defeating, a Golbat and a Honchkrow that Kris’ Ampharos and Eve easily disposed of.

Proton and Ariana only stepped aside when Lilith put them to sleep.

“He can’t be anywhere else,” Kris said as they got on the elevator, their Pokémon now drawn into their balls.

“He?” Zoe asked.

“Archer. The one leading all of this.”

Zoe almost laughed, almost giggled and scoffed at the thought of a now-nineteen-year-old trying to take down a criminal organization, almost giggled and scoffed at the fact that she was joining her on this ridiculous quest. But she didn’t. She kept her mouth shut, let a tiny, anxious little smirk quirk the corner of her lips.

The elevator doors opened up to a large rooftop closed in by a parapet and tall, thin, curving iron bars, lest an observer decide the day they visited would be their last.

It took them a minute to find the man named Archer on the rooftop, fiddling with a radio and keeping his eyes manically locked on the screen of a tablet that showed a map of Johto. There was a Houndoom by his side, and she noticed Zoe and Kris well before Archer did. He hardly even reacted to the hellhound’s sudden bark and spit of fire, only turning after his Houndoom growled and called him to attention with the whip of her tail.

“Oh!” he said, just after the flash from Zoe and Kris’ Poké Balls faded. He found himself facing a Feraligatr and a Typhlosion. “Oh, you,” he said, narrowing his eyes at Kris. “Yes, I remember you. Very clearly a traitor now, are you,” he mocked.

“Your grunts are done for,” Kris told him. 

And he grinned.

He was wearing white in a city of gold, in the spotlight of the sun. He almost looked like he was glowing, glowing too bright for the grin on his face and the glint in his eyes and the dark-type at his side.

His hair was bright and powder blue, nothing like the R stamped on his chest, nothing like the red that would fill the tiles of the rooftop. But Zoe wouldn’t know that until later.


	9. Chapter 9

“Zoe.”

Kris remembers her name this time. She didn’t remember it at the Radio Tower two months ago, but she remembers it now, four months after they first met.

Zoe never forgot her name. “What are you doing here?” she asks, and she adds a nervous smile and a breathy chuckle when she realizes how rude that sounds. “I mean, you’ve already gotten your Fog Badge and all…”

“Yeah,” Kris chuckles. It’s awkward. The air between them is awkward and calm, not at all like the tension they breathed together two months ago. “All eight badges now, actually.”

She smiles genuinely now. Her face lights up. It’s not unexpected news, but it’s exciting nonetheless. “Congratulations. Did you just get your last one? Clair, I’m assuming.”

“Like two weeks ago, yeah. She wasn’t all that much trouble for Ingrid and Charlie, though,” she adds. Her Feraligatr and Ampharos, if Zoe remembers correctly. There’s still confidence and pride in Kris’ voice. The genuine, good-natured kind. Not the kind of pride that filled Ariana’s eyes.

“That’s great.” Zoe smiles—a little nervously now, because she asks, “Are you going to take on the Elite Four?” when she never aimed to do that herself.

In a way that relieves her, somehow, Kris shrugs. “Not sure yet. There, uh… were a couple things I wanted to take care of before I decided.” She glances at the locked doors of the gym. “It’s… Well, one of those things is why I’m here.”

Zoe waits for her to continue.

Kris peers inside. She doesn’t look back at Zoe. “Is Morty in?”

“No,” she starts, and she can’t help but look away briefly. “He’s… He’s at a funeral.”

She doesn’t notice Kris cringe. “Oh.”

There’s a pause, and Kris laughs dryly. “I always seem to miss him, huh…” Finally she turns to Zoe, with an uncertain frown on her face. “I’m… sorry to hear about that, though.”

Zoe swallows thickly. _It wasn’t anyone he was close to_ , she wants to say, but she thinks of Morty’s face when he saw Ned’s ghost, she thinks of Georgina’s pity when _she_ saw Ned’s ghost, and she thinks of herself and what she felt when she saw Ned. It wasn’t heartbrokenness or sorrow, but there was something… Or maybe nothing, maybe just hollowness. Just the draining emptiness of her memories.

And yet somehow, she manages to force a small smile on her face, one that she knows looks false and forced. She shrugs. “It happens all the time…”

Kris blinks. Pauses. Like she can see right through Zoe but isn’t sure if she’s in a place to say anything about it. “Oh, well… I guess, he _is_ the ghost gym leader.”

She gives a curt nod, false smile still on her face. “Right.”

“Mm.”

There’s a moment of silence. An uneasy one where all Zoe can think about is the air on the roof of the Radio Tower. She sees Kris’ navy hair, sees her white jacket, and Archer comes to mind, with glowing suit and powder blue.

“Do you know when he’ll be back?” Kris asks, so suddenly that Zoe’s heart starts to race.

“Oh, uh… A few hours, probably.” Zoe looks to the side and shrugs, as if to apologize for her uncertainty. Her fingers twitch and curl into her palms before she can start picking at her nails. It’d be a shame to chip away the polish so soon. “You’re sure it’s not anything I can help you with?”

Kris pauses, thinks, and eventually shrugs. “Not sure… I mean, unless…” She furrows her brow. “Well, what is it that you do at the gym anyway?”

Zoe fights back a frown and thinks to answer, _See the dead_ , like Martha once joked with her, but ultimately decides against it. “Sometimes I battle the returning challengers seeking some help with the battles. But—”

“You have a ghost type? I don’t remember you having—” Kris starts, but she cuts herself off when she realizes what she’s saying. “Having one, last time…”

Zoe bites her lip. She picks at her nails anyway. “No, I-I borrow them.”

There’s another pause. She keeps picking at her nails, keeps making _clicking_ sounds at her fingertips, flecks of navy flying off and floating to the ground.

“Um…” Zoe finally says, but there’s still _clicking_. “I was going to say that mostly I just handle a lot of the paperwork.”

Kris seems to perk up at that. There’s a glimmer of strange hope in her eyes, and Zoe isn’t sure what to make of it. “Paperwork? Uh, does that—” Kris scratches her cheek. She looks away. “Does that include the… you know, the… burials?”

She pauses. (The _clicking_ stops.) She stares. It’s unnerving to see Kris reluctant to look straight at her. “Um… Usually, yeah. Are you— Um, I don’t want to assume but, are you here to… to ask for another burial?”

Her eyes go wide. “Oh, no no! I was hoping…” She looks away again and chuckles nervously. “Well, if you’re the one who handled the paperwork for my Girafarig, maybe you’d know where Morty buried her ashes? I mean, I… I never really paid my respects, and I know I should have months ago but—”

She smiles softly. “That’s fine. That’s something people do when they’re ready to do it,” she says, but she thinks of herself and thinks of how she can’t believe that herself.

Kris looks like she thinks the same, because she looks away and frowns. “I guess.”

Zoe could say something more. She knows that. She could say something more convincing, maybe something that rationalizes what she said about people paying their respects when they’re ready. But she knows Kris won’t really hear it, not when she can’t listen to that logic herself. So instead, she tells Kris, “I know where Morty buried her. If you’d like, I can take you there now. It’s not a far walk from here.”

Kris’ gaze instantly shoots back up to her, eyes wide and bright. “Oh, uh, no, that’s-that’s fine.” She laughs nervously, like Zoe just caught her admitting something embarrassing. “I was thinking of just going there on my own time anyway.”

Of course. That’s a private moment. But… “It’s in the forest by the Bell Tower. One of my Pokémon pretty much stands guard there, and I don’t think she’d let you stay unless I told her it was fine. I’ll just bring you to the cemetery and leave you be? Otherwise, you could wait for Morty to get back.” Valeria would stand down if Morty asked her to.

“Oh… Um…” Kris shrugs. She looks defeated, the way she does it. The way she looks away and lowers her head, and it isn’t right. “I guess that’d be fine, yeah.”

They walk toward the Bell Tower for a long time in silence, unsure of what to say, unsure of how to break the tense quiet.

It isn’t until they reach the barrier station, until they pass the sages there and reach the stairs leading to the trail, that Kris perks up and nervously asks, “Are… Are yours there too?”

Zoe’s muscles tense.


	10. Chapter 10

Archer’s grin was—and, in Zoe’s memory, is and forever will be—unnatural. His lips curved too much. They pushed his cheeks so far up into his eyes that Zoe could hardly see them, though she could feel his gaze flitting between her and Kris. His grin bared his teeth like a predator’s, like the snarling Houndoom standing beside him.

For a moment, she thought that he wasn’t human—not that he was a shell of a man who had once been human, who perhaps had experienced too many awful things and had given up on the world. No, she thought, for a moment, in the two seconds between Kris’ words and his reply, that he was simply a demon.

He yelled for a Smog. His Houndoom parted her fangs and spewed a cloud of poisonous gas, and Zoe thought of a ghost-type that Morty had once told her about, one that had been banished from this world for its incredible violence.

“Don’t breathe it in!” Kris yelled, bringing Zoe’s attention to the battle that had just begun.

The two of them stepped back, both with their arms over their mouths in what they knew was a vain attempt to keep from breathing in the Smog. The dark cloud only crept toward them, only crept toward Ashton and Kris’ Feraligatr, so slowly that they didn’t know how to react. They didn’t know what move to make, so they watched the cloud carefully, trying and failing to peer through it to spot the Houndoom or her trainer.

For a moment, only the sound of distant sirens filled the air.

Something shot out of the cloud, something quiet and quick, so quick that Zoe only saw what it was when she heard Kris scream and hiss. It was a Crobat.

“Ashton!”

Her Typhlosion spat out a Flamethrower, feet above Kris’ head, chasing the Crobat back into the cloud with a stream of fire.

Kris’ Feraligatr roared and moved to chase after the Crobat, but Kris yelled, “Ingrid, don’t!” and kept the water-type in her place. Ingrid settled for standing her ground and snarling at the clearing Smog.

Zoe could see Archer now, if she squinted. He was probably still grinning. “Ashton, be careful,” she said.

Ashton hunched his shoulders. The fire around his neck flared brighter.

When she felt it was safe enough to turn away, Zoe finally took a good look at Kris. And she froze.

Her immediate thought was that humans weren’t supposed to be targets in a battle.

There was a gash in Kris’ shoulder, in the sleeve of her shirt, the Team Rocket shirt. The one that made her seem like she was on Archer’s side. And it gave Zoe the sudden knowledge that Archer wouldn’t have cared if Kris _were_ on his side or not. Like he didn’t have allies. Like he didn’t _care_ for allies. Like he only cared for those that were useful to him, until they weren’t.

Kris hissed, and the Antidote in her hand hissed as she used it on herself, and Zoe realized what they were really up against: someone who had no issue doing whatever it took to get what he wanted. Zoe looked toward Archer. The cloud hadn’t cleared up much more, but it didn’t seem like he or his Pokémon had moved.

She blinked. “Kris,” she said belatedly, “I don’t think that’s going to help.”

“Better than nothing,” Kris said, and she tossed the empty spray bottle aside and looked to Archer with the most determined face Zoe had ever seen on anyone. Kris had asked her to play the part of the hero with her, but Kris wasn’t pretending.

Kris glanced at her. “I’ll be fine,” she said, before telling Ingrid to go for an Ice Beam.

But the skin around her wound was turning purple.

Zoe was going to say something about it, but something moved. It was the Crobat, darting out of the way of Ingrid’s Ice Beam, and she immediately knew what to do to pin it down. It was second nature. The kind of situation she had seen in plenty of battles before. It made her feel confident, despite knowing what their opponent was willing to do. “Ashton, Swift! Kris, get Ingrid to close in on it as it falls. We’ll keep the Houndoom at bay.”

“Got it,” she said, but her voice sounded strained. “Ingrid, get an Ice Fang ready and stay close!”

Ashton’s neck flared and shimmering projectiles shot from his mouth, glowing like stars, flying like arrows, homing in on the bat that tried to fly out of their way. Ingrid roared and chased after Ashton’s attack. Her mouth hung wide open, seeping mist as water froze around her jagged teeth.

Zoe hardly noticed when the Swift had met its mark. She heard the Crobat’s hiss of pain, and in the corner of her eye, she might have seen Ingrid move to catch the bat in her fangs, but she was too focused on the Houndoom. Never mind Archer, never mind Kris (though she kept her ears open to any signs of pain from the girl), she was focused on the Houndoom—on how still her tail was, where her eyes looked, how she bared her crackling teeth and lowered her body to pounce—

“Ashton, the Houndoom!”

She didn’t have to say more than that. She knew he would drop to all fours and push off with his hind legs, moving so quickly he’d leave a streak of light behind himself. He dashed beneath Ingrid as she jumped and caught the Crobat in her icy jaws, and slammed into the Houndoom’s chest right as she leaped for the Thunder Fang.

And something crunched.

Zoe didn’t know what it was or what it might’ve been. She thought it was Ashton at first, but he had already darted away from the Houndoom’s teeth. She thought it might’ve been a gunshot, like the ones that were fired downstairs, but it didn’t sound like a gunshot. She thought of Kris, but a glance to her left confirmed that the girl was still standing, though looking much paler than she should have.

So she looked at Archer, and saw the snarl on his face. And she looked at Ingrid, and saw the Crobat lying limp in her mouth. The Crobat's eyes were frozen open in fear, looking straight at the teeth lodged in his skull.

Ingrid snarled and yanked the corpse out of her mouth, and the Crobat dropped like a stone. Blood slowly pooled around him, and when Zoe looked up, she saw the blood that stained Ingrid’s teeth and maw. When she looked up even further, she saw the Crobat’s soul.

He was hissing, writhing, swooping and swiping at Ingrid with his wings like he was still fighting, like he didn’t know what had happened, but he had to know. He seemed too frustrated not to know.

He kept swiping at Ingrid, kept hissing at her, kept trying to bite her, but Ingrid would only eye the air like she could feel him there but couldn’t see him. She would scratch where his soul would try to hurt her, or she would snap her teeth like that would scare away whatever vague presence she felt, but that was it.

He tried to reach her, tried to hurt her, tried to fight back somehow, and Zoe felt something catch in her throat, but the Houndoom snarled and she felt like something was wrong and she turned and saw Kris sitting on the floor.

Her heart pounded.

“Kris, you need to get out of here,” she said. But she couldn’t move, she could only look at the purple wound in Kris’ arm, could only look at the girl’s head in the hopes that she heard her and would look up at her.

“You need to get to a doctor!” she said again, and Kris looked at her this time, tired and sighing heavily, but she nodded a bit, and Zoe could feel Ingrid turning to her trainer to see what was wrong.

And it felt like it happened so slowly, in this moment of silence.

"Hera!" Archer growled.

His Houndoom snarled in response. She rushed forward, mouth wide open, all teeth and spit and electricity. She ran straight toward Ingrid, and the first thing Zoe could think of was Kris getting bitten. She would have followed that thought, would've followed it to the image of Kris seizing and Kris dying but—

"Ashton, keep it back!" she shouted, voice higher than usual, muscles tensed, heart racing. She might have been panicked, just a little, but she was moving now, carefully and quickly walking to Kris to help her off the floor. Ingrid was at Kris' side, but she kept a bright, angry eye on the Houndoom taking hits from Swift.

Kris needed help to stand. She needed Ingrid next to her and needed Zoe's shaky strength to pull her up to stand on her own feet. Even then, she had to lean against Ingrid to keep herself from falling, like the world was spinning around her.

And she was still so pale. A sheen of sweat covered her face and her eyelids drooped and the more Zoe looked at her, the more terrified she felt.

"Ingrid," Zoe said, quietly, carefully, watching Kris and making eye contact with her when she finally looked up. "Get her to a hospital. Or-or to anyone who can get you guys some help, just hurry."

Ingrid nodded and grunted, and somehow that sound, the low rumble in Ingrid’s throat, made the growls on the battlefield more apparent to Zoe. So she turned back around while Ingrid helped Kris inside the building again—helped her, pushed her, carried her, however it was that she got Kris to move more quickly.

All Zoe saw was smoke, fog, whatever it was that hung over the roof like a dark, menacing ghost that was more than willing to hide half the battle and haunt her memory in the weeks that would follow.

She heard Archer shout something. She remembers that much, but she can’t remember _what_ he had said. In her memory, his words sound as foggy as the roof looked, and all she knows now is that his words prompted her to turn around again, to watch Ingrid leave the rooftop with Kris in her arms. His words were a distraction.

But it had to have been more than just the words. She thinks it’s ridiculous that just a few words would’ve broken her attention so much. It had to be more than that. It had to be the fear in her chest, the fear that left her heart pounding and tensed every muscle in her body. It had to be the _fear_ that made her freeze because—

Because when she turned around, she saw it leaping out of the cloud, this streamlined, black, bony shape with sharp horns and sharp claws and sharp teeth enveloped in darkness and she saw it before it happened, she saw the Houndoom’s teeth sink into Ashton’s throat but all Zoe could do was open her mouth. She couldn’t shout. She didn’t have the time.

It’s hard to force herself not to think about it now. About the very moment that hellhound broke Ashton’s neck with her jaws, about the way his eyes went wide and his body went limp and the fire around his neck so easily went out.

Somehow, the memory of his soul appearing is easier for her to handle than the memory of him being killed. His spirit looked horrified, and when he understood what had happened, he looked ashamed and bashful, but he didn’t look the way his body did.

At the time, though, when both his body and soul were in front of her—neither was easier to see than the other. And yet, she couldn’t look away. She just stood there and stared and probably shook. (She can’t remember if she shook or not. But it makes sense to her that she would have, that she would’ve felt all her warmth and strength and confidence bleed out of her in that instant.) She must have been as wide-eyed as Ashton’s corpse, and just as quiet. 

She didn’t and doesn’t know at what point his soul disappeared, but when she realized he wasn’t in front of her anymore, standing with hunched shoulders like he was a Cyndaquil again, she finally breathed—and she turned and looked everywhere she could but all she could see was the Houndoom licking her maw and Archer all bright white and powder blue now that the smog had disappeared and his Crobat’s body was still on the floor and where had _his_ spirit gone? Was the Crobat _gone_ gone? Was Ashton _gone_ gone? Or was he hiding? Would she see him again? She didn’t know. She wishes she had known, because if she had known that she would see him again, she might not have started with her hiccupping cries, holding her hands over her mouth in some useless attempt to quiet herself.

She didn’t need her hands to quiet herself anyway. Archer laughed shortly after, and that was jarring enough.

He said something after that, something else that she can’t remember verbatim. It was a threat, though. She knew and remembers that at the very least, a threat that she heard in the Houndoom’s snarls too. Zoe might have taken a step back afterward, might have shook her head, might have laughed a little nervously and said something quietly and shakily in some attempt to placate Archer and get out of there, because this was beyond her capabilities. Fighting a killer was beyond a regular trainer.

But she saw Archer’s lips move (couldn’t hear him over the pounding in her ears) and the Houndoom bolted with what she swore was a smirk, darting across the roof with shiny eyes focused on _her_ and—

And she threw another ball, an Ultra Ball, the only one she owned, and she knew what that meant. Damien. Bright red scales against a bright blue sky, standing between her and that bloodthirsty Houndoom. She couldn’t see if the Houndoom had managed to sink her teeth into Damien’s side, but he turned from Ashton’s body to the Houndoom and roared. She couldn’t see Damien’s face, but she imagined what it looked like. She could imagine the fury that had to be in the Gyarados’ eyes.

Damien’s formidable presence calmed her down a little, just enough to hear Archer call his Houndoom back and notice that he sent in an Alakazam. And it sparked something in her. It made her feel like maybe she had some control over this after all. An opposing Pokémon with flimsy defenses? A physical powerhouse with a Dark move in his arsenal? Damien had this. They had this. They could take that Alakazam down without a problem. 

So she yelled, “Bite!” before the less panicked half of her mind spoke up and let her know that there had to be a reason why Archer would willingly send in an Alakazam against a Gyarados. He was evil and ruthless and most certainly not an idiot. He wasn’t an amateur trainer challenging a gym leader.

She likes to think she tried to do something. She likes to misremember that she had reached for Damien’s Ultra Ball and shouted his name but really, she froze. She likes to pretend that at that moment, when she saw the flash of that Alakazam’s Thunderbolt, that she didn’t think of how much of a failure she was as a trainer, that her badges were those of a fraud, that she was stupid and weak and just as responsible as Archer. She may as well have been a murderer too.

Damien shrieked, in this shrill way she had never heard before. It vibrated in her ears and would leave them ringing afterward, and it _hurt_ , it hurt to listen to, but she didn’t move her hands to cover her ears. She just flinched and stepped back and thought about running, about leaving Damien and Ashton behind like a fucking coward but she’s glad that she couldn’t move, that she just stood there hunched, squinting, peering through the light of all that electricity, watching Damien somehow lunge forward like an Arbok in waiting—and at the moment, she didn’t know what had happened, just that he had lunged forward and the lightning had stopped and somehow the Alakazam had had the presence of mind to catch Damien with Psychic before the upper half of his body fell and crashed through the roof.

She’s had scary thoughts about that since then. About how things might have turned out if Damien _had_ fallen or if he had exerted too much force or done something else to destroy the roof and collapse the building and bring them all down. (She’s wondered if that would’ve been better, but she doesn’t entertain those thoughts anymore.)

It’s all a blur in her head. She doesn’t know what exactly happened to the Alakazam. Just that Archer cursed and must have called him back and she hoped and hopes that Damien managed to get one hit in before he died, before his soul raised itself from his body and turned and thrashed and roared, and she couldn’t do anything about it. She couldn’t say anything to him, couldn’t even look at him, couldn’t look at his body or at Ashton’s or at that Crobat’s, she just stared and shook and hardly breathed but she did see that Houndoom again. Baring her teeth and licking her maw like she was due for a vengeful meal, and at least Zoe moved before the Houndoom did. At least her hand moved to her pockets because there was no way she could ever outrun that thing, no way it wouldn’t get to her throat like with—

Cyrus took the field with four flapping violet wings, with movement that Archer’s Crobat didn’t have, but it wasn’t like it wouldn’t be long before Cyrus ended up just like him. The Houndoom’s teeth crackled and sank in despite Cyrus’ attempts to strike with wing and teeth, it didn’t matter, won’t ever matter, because what’s a Crobat to a Thunder Fang? What’s a Gyarados to a Thunderbolt or a Typhlosion to a Bite to the neck?

Did she give up after that? She doesn’t know. She certainly couldn’t tell at the time. Who was she to be able to keep anything straight after that, after watching three of them fall, after losing sight of Ashton and watching Cyrus’ spirit fail to grasp what was going on as he watched Damien’s soul try and try and fail to lash out at Archer and that hellhound.

She must have shut down after that, because it took what felt like five minutes for her to register the sound of Archer’s laughter and his Houndoom’s victorious howl, and she _tried_ after that. She tried to step back but she couldn’t move, and when Archer asked, “Where’s the next one?” with a sickening leer, his Houndoom crouched and snarled and dared her to try to leave and—

She threw two balls this time, because Eve and Lilith worked best as a pair and it wasn’t like either one of them had an advantage over the Houndoom. Maybe they could distract the Houndoom long enough, maybe Lilith could draw her attention and Eve could attack and maybe that would work, maybe it could.

It didn’t, of course. Of _course_ it didn’t. Of _course_ the Houndoom would be too quick to spit fire and of _course_ Lilith couldn’t land a single Hypnosis, and once the fire had roasted a screeching Eve and left her spirit in the air spinning her magnets and watching Lilith with what Zoe could only imagine was a furiously terrified look—after that, well… What good were attacks and status moves that always missed their mark?

She was wrong. She does know when she finally gave up. It was when the Houndoom landed the final blow on Lilith, _that_ was when her knees finally gave. Her hands dug into her pockets like maybe she had someone else who could help, like she had Valeria or Geoff but— But there was just the one smooth Poké Ball. The one that had never been thrown onto a battlefield. Kayin’s.

“Well?” she heard, and she flinched and her eyes stung and her hand closed around the Poké Ball that she refused to throw out. Kayin couldn’t help. He wasn’t capable of it. And she couldn’t let him try.

“Th-that’s it,” she whimpered, too quietly for Archer to hear her, but he seemed to get it all the same.

So he scoffed and laughed and maybe he rolled his eyes, and he spat, “Oh, come now, no self-respecting trainer would come up here to battle _me_ without a full team!”

She shook her head. She clenched her fist tighter. He scoffed.

“You must have _something_ in that pocket, no?”

She froze. Always such a terrible liar.

She heard the Houndoom’s claws rapidly beating against the rooftop, getting louder and closer and she finally looked up and somehow she thought of the fire that brought down the Brass Tower.

There were footsteps behind her. Voices, growls, she thought it was another Houndoom, another demon, and everything just…

Stopped.

She doesn’t remember the details after that. Just the Hitmonchan that slammed a Mach Punch into the Houndoom’s chest, and the police officers that stepped in front of her and helped her back inside where she couldn’t watch them deal with Archer and the rest of his Pokémon, whatever they were.

There was one officer who stayed with her while she sat curled up against the wall, ignoring everything he asked her. She just sat there and stared at the floor, and thought. About the battle. About Kris. About Kuni and the twins. About Morty.

Morty would be so, so disappointed, she thought, to learn that she wasn’t any better than those amateur trainers who walked away from gym battles with an accidental death. (He wasn’t and isn’t disappointed in her, but sometimes she’ll think he is anyway.)

She was thinking about Morty—specifically about the time he met Eve for the first time and reminded her to evolve the little Magnemite—when Ashton’s spirit showed up. He was curled over himself and looked at her with shining, apologetic eyes. She saw the timid Cyndaquil he used to be.

And she finally cried.

The officer didn’t know what to do other than stand there and awkwardly offer words that were supposed to be comforting.

* * *

It felt like ages before the other officers came through with Archer in handcuffs, shouting things through their radios and saying things to each other that echoed in Zoe’s head but made no sense.

She had stopped crying by that point. Ashton had curled up beside her. Damien had finally calmed down and had simply rested his head next to her. Cyrus flew in lazy circles above them, hissing at nothing. Lilith and Eve stood further way. The two of them were quiet. Not that it would have mattered if they weren’t quiet. They could have been snickering and scheming like always, but it wasn’t like the officers would hear or even see it. Only Zoe could, though she had to ignore the wispy images of just Ashton and Damien beside her like her sanity depended on it.

At some point, maybe when the officers asked her to go with them, she got up and stepped back onto the rooftop. Maybe she had fought with the officers to let her see the aftermath, maybe not. She doesn’t remember.

She does remember stepping back into the sunlight, though. She remembers thinking how warm it was, like the sun was trying to hold her and brace her for what she was going to see.

She felt so far away from it. Like she was walking up to life-like replicas of someone else’s Pokémon: there a Hypno with Bite wounds in its neck and wide, glazed eyes; there a deformed Magneton with a half-melted body; there a Crobat with torn wings and burns, and another, foreign Crobat with a hole in its skull; over there the enormous red Gyarados with scorched scales and frills.

And then the Typhlosion that she actually walked up to, with its head bent at such a wrong angle and dead eyes that looked straight back at her. She walked up to it, too close to it, so close that she stepped in the blood pooled around its neck.

Her eyes stung, but all she could say was, “Paperwork.”

She blinked and turned away and headed back inside and said, “The… paperwork for the… cremations and funerals and… And I don’t know how Morty’s gonna bring them back but—“ She breathed out a laugh, her eyes stung, and she brought a hand to her mouth. “It’s gonna cost him so much,” she whispered. The officers she walked past didn’t know what to say.

No one really knew what to say. Not Kuni or the twins when Zoe found them and stared through them and told them what had happened. Not Kris when Zoe found _her_ , because she had to know that Kris was okay, and she was, but she looked disturbed when Zoe laughed about how badly she had lost. Not Kayin or Valeria or Geoff when she had to explain to them that their friends and teammates weren’t coming back. Not Zuki or any of her other sisters, not any of the mediums at the gym, not any of the sages at the Bell Tower.

Not even Morty. Somehow how he had arranged for the bodies to be brought back to Ecruteak, and he had arranged for the coffins (including an enormous one for a twenty-foot long beast that would take hours to burn), for the funerals, and for the cremations.

The pyres were lit at noon, when the sunlight could surround her and seep warmth into her dark dress. It was like standing in the aftermath again. 

She stood closest to the fires, with Morty right behind her, and quietly watched the flames. He took a deep breath and watched them with her. “I’m sorry,” was all he could say.

She didn’t say anything in reply.


	11. Chapter 11

It’s quiet when Zoe and Kris step onto the trail. The only sound is the door creaking shut behind them. Not even the wind rustles the leaves. The sounds of the city are drowned out by the forest. No bells toll, no wind chimes ring. There’s nothing but the sound of their own footsteps. Nothing to feel but the warmth of the patchy sunlight that filters through the canopy.

They take a few steps onto the trail, and Zoe sighs. She lets out a long, anxious breath, the only sound they hear over their footsteps, over the leaves that brush over each other and crinkle as they walk past. “Yeah,” she answers, so much later that Kris has nearly forgotten what she asked in the first place.

_Yes, they are here too._

They reach the fork in the path within seconds, and they stop. Zoe freezes there, looking into the forest, hands at her sides, fingers curling to pick at nails and chipped polish. Pick, pick, pick.

Zoe doesn’t move and doesn’t speak after that, so Kris eventually, hesitantly asks, “Dalia’s buried there?”

She takes a second. Nods. “Yeah. You can just follow the dirt path…” she starts. But then she remembers Valeria. She bites her lip. Takes a breath. She doesn’t want to yell, doesn’t really have the energy to yell, but it’s the easiest way to call her out. “Valeria!” she shouts. The name echoes softly in the woods.

The leaves answer her first. They stir and rustle and whisper to each other in the breeze, talking softly and trading secrets—like they’re talking behind her back, she thinks, but that’s ridiculous. How stupid to think the woods would name her _murderer_ when she fought, and for a moment, she curses the trees and herself, but at least she feels the sun on her shoulders like an ally and confidante. Though, its warmth doesn’t quiet the leaves. No, they keep whispering in their breezy language, gently hissing over each other until Valeria appears to quiet them with a stroke of her wings.

The Dragonite appears from the forest like she is a part of it, orange scales emerging from the golden leaves until she stands before the young women, tall and strong and alive.

Zoe puts a hand on Valeria’s arm. She has to. She has to remind herself that she’s there, that she can feel her, that her scales are bumpy, that they’re cool despite the sun, that they’re tangible despite the ghosts that Valeria is surrounded by but can’t see. Zoe smiles up at her. It’s a sad smile. “Kris here wants to pay her respects to a Pokémon buried there. I wanted to give her some time alone there.”

Valeria looks at Kris, blinks, and looks back at Zoe with a crooning hum in her throat. It sounds like a question.

Zoe nods and turns to Kris. “Take all the time you need. Just follow the dirt path. The cemetery isn’t far in.”

The word _cemetery_ seems to surprise Kris, but she collects herself quickly and nods. Still, she gives the forest a cautious glace. “Um… Thank you.”

Zoe gives her a small smile. She watches her enter the forest and doesn’t look away from the trees until she can no longer see that head of navy hair.

She steps back. Steps back, steps back, until her back hits the trunk of a tree on the other side of the trail. Her palms and fingers graze the bark behind her. It’s coarse, in a way that seems foreign to her, especially when she thinks of the tombstones in the forest. The tree is coarse and alive. The stones are smooth and lifeless.

Valeria shifts her wings and croons at her, a deep, quiet, concerned sound that warbles at the back of her throat. It forces Zoe to look at her, to look up from the line of leaves between the trail and the trees opposite her, and look at her Dragonite instead. Zoe opens her mouth, but she doesn’t have anything to say.

Valeria nudges her with her tail. Somehow that prompts her.

“I don’t come here often enough,” she says, unsure of where exactly that came from. But she thinks of Kris finally coming back, months after Dalia passed. She thinks of Terry’s trainer coming back months after his Growlithe died, too. She thinks of Morty and his yearly visits to the forest and the Bell Tower. She thinks she shouldn’t feel bad, because those others came long after the fact. They took their time. She understands that. But she can’t apply that to herself.

“And I…” Her gaze goes up to the trees, up to the autumn leaves and the patches of blue sky. “I should. I was…” _There_ , she thinks to say, but her train of thought shifts. “It’s my fault…”

Valeria grunts. It’s not an angry sound, but it disagrees with her all the same, and it almost makes her laugh. Is it Kris’ fault that Dalia died? That trainer’s for Terry? Is it Morty’s fault that any of those eleven passed away? Yes, no, or maybe it was all dumb luck, but she can’t disagree with her initial thought. She can’t agree with Valeria’s dissent. Not wholeheartedly. “I was their trainer, it’s my job to keep them safe.” She pauses. “ _Was_ my job.”

But she thinks of Zuki. Thinks of Kuni. Thinks of Morty and the mediums, even of Eusine who hasn’t been back to Ecruteak since the Radio Tower fiasco. But he’s asked about her, and though she hasn’t spoken to him, she knows he’d agree with the rest. He’d say it wasn’t her fault, too. It was Team Rocket’s. And yes, it was, but…

But. That’s all she can think. There’s always something else.

But then Valeria walks up to her, heavy feet thumping against the ground, powerful hand tugging her arm, tough head practically ramming into her shoulder in an attempt to stay close to her, to tell Zoe that she’s here and that she’s kept her safe and that it really, truly isn’t her fault. And something about that makes Zoe’s eyes sting and makes her think that she tried her hardest. She fought as hard as she could amidst her fear and panic, and even if she couldn’t keep her Pokémon from dying, maybe they kept others from dying—maybe. Hopefully. That was likely the case anyway, that their horrifying battle protected countless others. But the thought seems too optimistic for her when she can feel a cavity in her chest and tears about to roll down her cheeks.

She puts her hands around Valeria’s neck and holds her tight and tries so, so hard not to cry loudly. 

They’re in the forest. In the ground. In tiny little urns, in specks of ash, and it hurts but…

But maybe that’s okay. Maybe, hopefully, she’ll be okay.


	12. Chapter 12

It’s quiet when Zoe and Zuki step onto the trail. The only sound is the door creaking shut behind them. Not even the wind rustles the leaves. The sounds of the city are drowned out by the forest. No bells toll, no wind chimes ring. There’s nothing but the sound of their own footsteps. Nothing to feel but the warmth of the patchy sunlight that filters through the canopy.

Zoe still feels shaky. Not as anxious as she felt a month ago when Kris paid her respects to Dalia, but nervous all the same. She breathes in slowly. Breathes out slowly… She looks down the trail and settles her eyes on the fork in the path, and it’s like she can see what happened there a month ago. It’s like she can see Kris standing beside her with a nervous frown on her face, like she can see herself picking at her nails, staring at, into, beyond the cemetery. It’s like she can hear herself calling Valeria out, can hear the leaves whispering behind her back again, can see Valeria land beside her. She watches Kris hesitantly enter the forest, watches herself cry against Valeria, watches Kris step back out with equally puffy eyes.

It makes her want to turn back. Makes her stuff her hands into the pockets of her gray dress and clench them into fists. Makes the muscles in her legs, neck, and shoulders lock up.

She isn’t breathing, but she doesn’t notice that until Zuki gently says, “Hey.”

When she breathes in, the air feels warm in her lungs. It’s strange.

There’s a hand on her shoulder and then the words, “Do you feel like you’re ready?”

And she lets out a nervous chuckle that makes her think of the rooftop, the sunlight, the forest—and then Kris. And she reminds herself that she needs to do this. She tells herself that she _can_ do this, though it feels like a lie. “Maybe…”

She doesn’t make any attempt to move, though. She thinks of the graves instead, of their ghosts on the roof, of what Kris might’ve said at Dalia’s grave. She wonders how the Girafarig would’ve reacted if her ghost were still there. She wonders what Morty has said at those graves all these years, how he felt seeing the ghosts there, and how he felt each time he realized that one of the ghosts had left. Sad? Relieved? Some mix of the two? Has he ever felt angry with himself while he stood at those graves? Has he cried? Has he—?

Zuki’s face suddenly falls into her view, with a lighthearted and understanding glint in her eyes. “Am I going to have to tug you over there?”

Zoe smiles a little—wryly, reluctantly. She looks down and thinks to answer _yes_ because her legs feel too heavy to move, but she doesn’t want to give herself or Zuki an excuse to keep moving along the path. “I think I’m just… scared.”

“I know,” Zuki says softly.

And Zoe frowns at herself.

“Zoe, you don’t have to go right now, you know.”

“No, but…” She narrows her eyes, clenches her fists in her pockets. Her throat feels tight, and she lowers her head. “I need to let go of them at some point. I just wish I felt better about that by now…”

“Hey, it’s hard,” Zuki says, and her voice sounds as gentle as ever.

Yes, Zoe thinks, but that shouldn’t be her excuse.

“Do you _want_ to do this now?”

Zoe mulls it over for a few seconds, for a brief amount of time that feels like it’s too long. But eventually she answers, “Yeah.”

“Well you _can_ ,” Zuki says, and she wants to believe it but… “And you’ve got me right here, and all your other Pokémon.”

But she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t move. So Zuki puts a hand on her arm and says her name and asks her to look at her, and Zoe has to comply.

Her eyes are dark and gentle. She thinks of the garden behind Zuki’s home—remembers nail polish, warm words, childhood tea parties.

“It’s going to be okay, Zoe. I promise.”

She can’t help but look away. And she has to think about it again. Has to consider the possibility that Zuki would know better than she does right now.

“Do you want to keep going then? Or should we head back?”

She thinks. Takes a deep breath. She picks at her nails inside her pockets. She nods a little, but then realizes the nod probably wasn’t noticeable, and that even if it was, Zuki wouldn’t know which option she was agreeing to. “We can keep going…”

Zuki smiles, but she doesn’t see it.

“Come on, then,” Zuki says, extending her hand. Zoe wordlessly takes it.

She feels like a child being led by a parent as they walk down the path. She’s left with that thought as the wind moves through the trees and as the leaves crunch beneath their feet. They pause at the fork in the trail, but only long enough for Zuki to ask, “Ready?” and for Zoe to shrug and answer, “As I’ll ever be…”

It feels like stepping into an entirely different world. The trees are the same, as warm and golden in their hue as per usual, but the sky hides behind them, only peeking through the canopy in teasing flashes of blue for those eager enough to look for it. The ground is plush despite the bed of crisp fallen leaves that crunch underneath their feet, _crunch_ , _crunch_ , louder than their footsteps on the trail.

It’s colder here. She immediately thinks it’s because of the tombstones and the ghosts (that she hasn’t seen yet because she refuses to look up from the ground), but it’s really because the canopy leaves the cemetery in shadow.

She only stops walking because Zuki stops. She doesn’t move even when she hears Valeria’s crooning, not even when she hears the Dragonite carefully approach her on heavy feet, shoving mounds of crisp leaves aside, crunching, crunching.

Zuki squeezes her hand, and she squeezes back, thinking of the garden and afternoon teas and that maybe, maybe after all this she should say something. That if she can get through this, telling her how she feels won’t be so hard in comparison.

Valeria croons again, and Zoe decides that it’s time. She can feel the air move softly around her, and it scares her, but she can do it. She can take a deep breath and look up and forget about the rooftop and the battle, forget about Archer and the Houndoom, forget about the guilt. She can remember that she did everything that she could and hold onto that. She can forget about the shame.

So she takes a deep breath and she squeezes Zuki’s hand and she blindly finds Valeria with her other hand. She thinks of what the scene will look like when she finally looks up. Imagines the seventeen tombstones, black and dark gray amidst the oranges and yellows of the forest. She imagines Cyrus perched atop one of them, four violet wings folded close to his body like he’s resting after a long flight. She imagines Lilith beside him, regarding everyone with a look of disinterest like always, imagines Eve floating above her spinning her magnets and sparking and buzzing quietly at the Hypno about whatever little prank they might have planned. She imagines Damien wrapped around them, coiled around the small cemetery, red scales gleaming even in the shade.

And Ashton…

She imagines him less clearly. He looks like a loved pet and a wounded battler in her mind, and she can’t decide if he looks angry with her or not.

She hesitates and freezes, but she hears Ashton’s whine and immediately looks up, heart already hurting and guilt coming back to her. She expects to see what she saw on the rooftop, but he looks like a Cyndaquil again, like a Growlithe pup that just wants to play, like Terry when she first met his ghost, right here.

Her eyes sting, but the heaviness in her chest feels bittersweet, and unexpectedly so. She wants to step forward and hug Ashton and the others like they’re still here, like they finally received their eighth badge all over again after so much hard work.

When she breathes out, the air leaves her shakily. She looks at the others uncertainly, as if she’s been gone for so long that she’s a stranger to them now. But she ignores the feeling. Sets aside the shame. (Remembers the guilt, unfortunately.) “Hi…”

They look almost exactly how she imagined them. Damien is wrapped around the cemetery, Cyrus is perched on a tombstone, Lilith and Eve are huddled together. But they’re so much closer to her than she thought they would be. She could reach out and pat Cyrus’ head, could poke Eve’s magnets, could ruffle Lilith’s collar, could rub Damien’s belly. She could give Ashton all the head-scratches he wants, and she feels like she should with the way he’s looking at her—ears perked up, eyes bright with expectation. They’re all looking at her brightly. She instinctively starts to look for the resentment in their eyes, but Valeria rubs her head against her shoulder and surprises her enough to look away from them.

“W-what is it?” she asks the Dragonite, carefully setting a hand on her arm—because she _can_ pat Valeria’s arm, because she’s tangible and _there_ like the others aren’t, and it makes her think of Geoff and Kayin sitting in their Poké Balls in her bag, even of Tony sitting back home in her mother’s garden, screeching at things the way Weepinbell are wont to do. She frowns.

But Valeria just croons and rubs her head against her shoulder, happily and almost proudly.

Zuki smiles and squeezes her hand. “I think she’s just happy you’re here.”

Valeria grunts in agreement, and for some reason the thought that strikes Zoe is a forceful, sudden, _I should stop feeling sorry for myself_.

Zoe presses her cheek to Valeria’s head like an apology and an embrace. She lets go of Valeria, lets go of Zuki, and digs through her bag for the two Poké Balls inside. “Maybe it’d be best if we were _all_ here,” she says quietly. Remorsefully.

Kayin barks happily the instant the light from his Poké Ball disappears, and Geoff merely stands quietly and sturdily beside Zoe. She scratches Kayin between his ears and pats Geoff’s stony head. She smiles sadly at them, at Valeria, and at the others’ spirits. Something settles itself nervously in her chest. She knows she has to speak despite it, but she can’t help staring at the ground again. “I feel like… all I can ever really say is that I’m sorry… To you three,” she says with a glance at her Graveler, Umbreon, and Dragonite, “for not really being there. And to you,” she says, glancing at the others, her gaze always returning to the leaves on the ground, “for not visiting and, more than that…” She lowers her head more, practically tucking her chin between her collarbones, and starts picking at her nails. She wishes she hadn’t put her hair in a bun, that way it could fall over her face now and hide her. “I’m sorry for… letting that happen to you.” She remembers bodies on the roof, blood on the tiles, charred scales and broken bones and she bites her lips and tries to will away the tightness in her throat but it doesn’t work. So she takes a deep, shaky breath and says, “I-I know everyone always says otherwise but, it…” She sniffs. “It always feels like it’s my fault that you—” Her eyes sting and she blinks furiously to keep from crying. She doesn’t hear Zuki rummaging through her bag. “That the battle went that far, you know? Because I was…” (And she frowns. Yes, _was_ , not is. _Was_.) “I was your trainer, and I should’ve found some way to keep you safe.”

Her breath hitches and she sniffs again and she flinches when Zuki hands her a tissue. She barely whispers her thanks before she dabs at her nose. “And I mean, fine, I-I guess I was pretty panicked and all and-and maybe that’s why people say it’s not really my fault but…” She sniffs again and wipes her nose and her lip is trembling so much she thinks she should just stop and run away. But her legs feel too heavy to move and it’s not like she can just run away, not when she’s finally here, saying something instead of ignoring it all like she has been because she’s been too scared. “I guess I just… ‘m hoping you’ll forgive me is all…”

“Zoe, it’s not like…” Zuki starts, but she cuts herself off, instead settling for handing Zoe another tissue.

Zoe wipes her eyes and mutters,” Thanks…” when she takes the tissue. She can see Ashton from the corner of her eye, standing right in front of her looking like he wants to jump into her lap and cuddle with her in case it helped—so she feels guilty for trying to ignore him, using tears as her excuse. “I-I know you’re just gonna say it’s not my fault so they don’t need to forgive me but—”

But Ashton barks to cut her off and finally bring her attention to him. His eyes are still bright, and they look determined and scolding, like he’s telling her to listen to Zuki on this one.

Which can’t be right, she thinks. It can’t be that he really doesn’t hold it against her. So she looks to the others in search of that resentment she was looking for earlier, but she doesn’t find it. There’s some annoyance in Lilith’s eyes, sure, and that’s not unusual, but it’s not the kind of annoyance she thought it would be. Somehow she knows it’s not the bitterness she expected, but she has to ask the Hypno anyway, “What is it?”

Lilith blinks at her and grunts and nods toward Zuki, and that’s clear enough.

“What, you’re annoyed I’m not listening to her?” Zoe breathes out, almost laughing in relief.

Lilith just nods, but the others approach Zoe and huddle around her. Even Damien inches his way forward to be closer. And the air feels warmer when they do, surrounding her like sunlight despite the shade. Lilith eventually comes closer and plops herself down at her feet.

She wants to hug each of them. Her throat tightens again. “You guys aren’t mad at me…?”

There’s a moment of silence that follows that she can’t really explain. For a second, it’s restless. It’s irritated and confused and it weighs on her heavily. But it passes. She feels Kayin rub his face against her knee, and the air feels lighter again. Understanding. Like they were mad at one point, maybe with what happened or with her absence or with both, but like that’s in the past now.

She doesn’t realize when she ends up sitting on the ground, with an Umbreon in her lap, a Graveler right before her, a Dragonite on one side, and Zuki on the other. She doesn’t know how long they sit there. Sometimes Kayin perks up and nuzzles her, sometimes she reaches forward and gives Geoff a hug, sometimes she leans against Valeria. She looks to Zuki, and every time she does, Zuki looks back at her with a proud smile and squeezes her hand. She thinks again about saying something, but not yet. Sometime soon, when the time feels right.

For now, she tries to focus on her Pokémon, tries to focus on just being there with them, even if she’s quiet, even if her heart feels heavy, even if her eyes start to sting when she looks at them. Cyrus looks so out of place in such a confined area, unable to really spread his wings and fly to his heart’s content. Damien looks even more out of place lying on fallen leaves. It’s mostly the two of them that reminds her that they aren’t really here (never mind the tombstones), because Lilith and Eve look as preoccupied as ever, and Ashton looks perfectly happy napping beside Kayin.

It seems almost real enough that she could reach out and touch them, and she can only hope that it won’t break her heart as much during future visits.

Yes. Future visits. She needs to come back more often. Not just for herself but for them. She’s a medium after all. She knows it doesn’t do them any good to hold them here with her grief. 

She leans heavily against Zuki’s side. Letting go of them might be the most difficult thing she ever has to do, but she knows she needs to do it. 

 

They only decide to leave when Zuki points out the sun setting and quietly mentions that she’s getting hungry anyway.

When they get up, Zoe hugs Geoff and Kayin before calling them back into their Poké Balls, giving them one last apology, and she hugs Valeria and apologizes to her as well. “You’re with them all the time, too,” she says to the Dragonite. “Maybe you can’t see them, but I know you can feel them.” And she wants to say more, but she can’t really find the words. Not that she needs to, because Valeria croons and happily rubs her head against her shoulder anyway.

To the others, Zoe has even less to say. She gets lost in their hopeful stares, and doesn’t say anything until Zuki puts a hand on her shoulder and gently calls, “Zoe?”

She gives Zuki an apologetic look asking for a few minutes before turning back to her Pokémon. To their ghosts. _Ghosts_. It’s time to get more comfortable with that word. “I’m gonna visit more often, okay?”

They all perk up when she says that. Except maybe for Lilith, but the Hypno definitely watches her with more interest despite trying to be discreet about it.

“I should’ve been doing that from the start and…” She looks down, clenches her fists. “And I’m sorry I didn’t. But…” She works up the nerve to look up at them again. She looks at Lilith and Eve and Cyrus and Damien and lastly Ashton. She looks each of them in the eye. She can’t turn away from this anymore, can’t hide from them anymore. “But I’m doing something about it now at least? And I just—” There’s the thought that it’s not enough, not when she had left them here alone for so long. It’s not an unfounded thought, but it’s one that Zuki would probably chastise her for, one that Morty would probably understand but would also discourage.

No, she tries to set that aside. What matters is that she’s doing something now, and that _does_ count for something. “I love you guys,” she tells them. “And I… I know it’s probably selfish of me but, if you guys could wait for me to be here to say goodbye before you leave, would that be okay?”

For a long, brief moment, she only hears the familiar _click_ of her nails as she picks at them. But what she hears after is their collective agreement, grunts and buzzes making a promise, and it makes her smile and makes her eyes sting again.

“Okay,” she whispers, lips starting to tremble. Valeria croons supportively beside her and rubs her head against her shoulder again, but Zoe instinctively reaches back for Zuki’s hand, which readily accepts her hold. “Then I’ll see you guys really soon?” Zoe asks them, in a more level voice than she thought she could have achieved. And they happily agree.

Her head feels like a rush of thoughts and emotions that she can’t quite make sense of until she and Zuki step out of the forest and onto the trail again. It’s not that everything suddenly lines up when she’s on the path. It’s that Zuki distracts her with a hug and an, “I’m really proud of you,” that she wasn’t expecting. 

“I know that was really hard for you,” Zuki continues. Zoe only replies with a smile and hugs her back.

It’s warm in her arms. Gentle. Safe. Bittersweet, but happy nonetheless.

Zoe doesn’t want to stop hugging her, and even though there’s a voice in her head saying she’s hugged Zuki for just long enough that it might be awkward, there’s another voice saying that Zuki doesn’t want to stop hugging her either. She tries to listen to the latter voice more. It’s more comforting.

But the former voice comes up with a good reason to let go of Zuki, and she obliges, if only because it’s important. “Could we stop by the tower before we go?” she asks, only taking Zuki’s confused pause as her cue to pull away. She can’t bring herself to look Zuki in the eye once she’s stepped back, so she looks toward the Bell Tower immediately. “I think it’d be nice to light some candles for them.”

“Oh, yeah.” Zuki clears her throat, and gives her a nervous smile that Zoe doesn’t notice. “Yeah, we can—we can definitely go.”

Zoe gives her a quick, thankful look.

The tower stands tall at the end of the trail, basking in the glow of the sunset. It looks calm to her, somehow, like it has settled itself in preparation for the night, ready to look over the forest and the city when their inhabitants rest peacefully tonight.

She thinks of her Pokémon and wonders what it will be like for them when they finally get to rest. She starts to wonder what it will be like for herself. Her muscles tense before she can really consider it, but she spots Morty exiting the Bell Tower before her thoughts get anywhere.

She falters in her steps briefly, suddenly wondering if Morty will question why she took so long to come out here.

Morty spots them and smiles and walks up to them with a hollow greeting. The kind of greeting that she knows always follows his visits to the cemetery. She doesn’t follow that hollowness to his eyes, though, because his gaze becomes concerned once he looks at her. “Is everything okay?” he asks, with the perceptiveness of an attentive parent.

“Oh, yeah,” she answers unconvincingly. She even adds a shrug, in case he wasn’t certain of her uncertainty. “We were just…”

“We were just at the cemetery,” Zuki says, pulling Morty’s attention away from Zoe—and she’s so grateful for it because she can’t help but feel like he would be disappointed in her for taking so long to visit, even though she logically knows he wouldn’t be. But then Zuki turns back to her and asks, “And I think we’ll be visiting them again soon, right?” and she feels that disappointment loom over her shoulder again.

But when she glances at Morty, he doesn’t look disappointed at all. He looks proud. There’s a patient sadness in his gaze, one that she’s familiar with after all these years of being around him and his ghosts, but it’s one that she understands now. One that lets her reply, “Yeah.”

And he smiles. It’s sad, still. Condolent. But she understands. He doesn’t need to say anything.

“Actually,” Zoe adds, looking past him to the Bell Tower, “we were going to go in and light some candles for them. I thought it might be a good thing to do.”

He nods and turns back to the tower. “It can be helpful.”

The three of them enter together. It’s dim inside, lit mostly by lanterns now that the sun is setting. Zoe would have said it looked ominous and somber, but having Zuki and Morty beside her lifts her spirits enough that she doesn’t see it that way. It’s dark, yes, but it’s quiet. It’s peaceful. Even the walk to the table of candles at the back of the main room doesn’t feel difficult, and she knows that it only feels that way because of the two people supporting her, because of her Pokémon’s forgiveness and understanding.

It doesn’t keep her from finding the candles sad, however. None of that keeps her from remembering all the times she has come here with Morty, all the prayers he has whispered over these little flames, all the times she felt like she could only say she felt sorry and all the times that he felt he never had the words to respond. Those memories and the memories of her Pokémon—of their antics, of their friendship, of their battles and their ghosts— They make her eyes sting, and she gets the feeling that Zuki and Morty somehow know. Because Zuki takes her hand and squeezes it, and Morty lights the end of a wooden stick for her and passes it to her.

It takes a second—for her to remember why she’s doing this, why she needs to do this, why it’s a good thing that she’s doing this. That she needs to let go, and that it’s okay to let go. So she takes the stick and holds the flame at its end to the wicks of five white candles. She stares at the candles—assigning a Pokémon to each of them, Lilith, Eve, Cyrus, Damien, Ashton—stares long enough that Morty has to take the stick from her and dump its fiery end in a bowl of ashes before it burns up in her hand.

He puts a hand on her shoulder and asks, “Do you think you’ll be okay?”

She takes a long time to answer. Zuki squeezes her hand and she squeezes back, but she’s lost in her thoughts for the endless minute that follows, lost in the guilt and the shame that suddenly come rushing back to her.

But she finds it again.

She finds everyone’s support, and she finds that bit of positivity somewhere inside her. She finds the warmth that lies within her, that surrounds her here and in the forest and elsewhere. It’s enough to make her smile. It’s a sad smile, but it’s a smile. “Yeah,” she says. She nods. She squeezes Zuki’s hand. She looks over the five candles one last time, with a mix of sorrow and acceptance and peace in her heart.

“I’ll be okay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it! In the Sun's Embrace is now complete. I hope you all find this last chapter satisfying, even if it's not all rainbows and unicorns. I knew how I wanted it to come together at the end, and I'll admit that I'm a little worried that it ends just a bit too sadly? But I think it's the most fitting ending I could give this story.
> 
> That said, I want to thank all of you for reading this and for sticking around despite my mini-hiatuses. You guys make this feel worth it. ^_^ if you can, please do let me know what you liked, what you didn't like, where you think I can improve, and so on. Things like that are always good and always helpful to know.
> 
> So yeah! Thanks again for your time, everyone! I hope to see you around for whatever I write next! :)


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